Rod Dreher explains why, in 2006, he left Catholicism for the Orthodox Church:
The main reason why Orthodoxy is so attractive to converts, at least to this convert, is its seriousness about sin. I don’t mean that it’s a dour religion – it is very far from that! – but rather that Orthodoxy takes the brokenness of humankind with appropriate seriousness. Orthodoxy is not going to tell you that you’re okay. In fact, it will require you to call yourself, as St. Paul described himself, the “chief of sinners.” And Orthodoxy is going to tell you the Good News: Jesus died and returned to life so that you too might live. But in order to live, you are going to have to die to yourself, over and over again. And that will not be painless, and cannot be, or it’s not real.
Because of that, for all its dramatic beauty and rich feasting, Orthodoxy is far more austere and demanding than most American Christianity. The long liturgies, the frequent prayers, the intense fasts – all make serious demands on the believer, especially comfortable middle-class Americans like me. They call us out of ourselves, and to repentance. Orthodoxy is not interested in making you feel comfortable in your sins. It wants nothing less than for you to be a saint.
May 4th, 2011 | 10:42 am
You know, I think Mr. Dreher is a fine guy and a serious Christian man, but, speaking as a convert to Catholicism as well, I don’t understand how he could leave the Catholic Church, if he ever believed that it was vital to be in communion with the successor to St. Peter, the chief of the apostles. I sense that the lousy post Vatican II liturgy (as featured in most Catholic parishes) and widespread idiocy within the American Catholic church in general were the reasons; the clergy abuse just pushed him over the edge.
May 4th, 2011 | 10:46 am
Like Rod Dreher and many, many others, I have suffered through the assaults on the Roman Catholic Church and on the successor of St. Peter.
But unlike Mr. Dreher, I did remain. I was sustained by my conviction that the sacraments, having their origin as they do in God, are unchanging and inviolable, sinned against though they may be.
Testimony from members of the Orthodox Churches is impressive and spiritually affecting. May reunion come.
May 4th, 2011 | 10:58 am
One wonders if Mr. Dreher has ever read the book of Galatians.
May 4th, 2011 | 11:08 am
I don’t see any difference between his description of Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
May 4th, 2011 | 11:17 am
This would make more sense if he had been an Evangelical. He must have had terrible priests if he didn’t notice that the RC Church is serious about sin.
May 4th, 2011 | 12:06 pm
Rod Dreher didn’t become Catholic till he became Orthodox.
May 4th, 2011 | 1:57 pm
There are two points that I would make in response to Rod Dreher. The first has to do with the state of Catholicism at the present time. He is certainly right that after Vatican II the Church went through a period of terrible turmoil and (to be blunt) devastation, from which we have not yet completely emerged. But it has become increasingly clear that we are, in fact, emerging from it. This is perhaps not as evident to Mr. Dreher as it is to those of us who have been in the Catholic Church from a time long before Dreher joined and who have remained after he left. His actual experience of the state of Catholicism is based on a rather narrow temporal slice. He has therefore, it seems to me, no real historical perspective on what has occurred or is occurring in the Catholic Church. We live in an age when people become instant experts, and opinion-mongering has substituted for deeply informed commentary.
Those of us who experienced the turmoil in the Church in the late sixties and the seventies, know how desperate — and humanly speaking, hopeless — things seemed. Not only was there a general trashing of everything traditional, but those who favored this wanton destruction seemed to be in control at every level of the Church from the bishops on down to the parish level. By the 1980′s the American episcopate was heavily dominated by people who were recognized on all sides to be theological liberals. (More than half the Archbishops in the U.S. had very liberal reputations — this was the age of Weakland and Hunthausen, who were not “outliers”, but the trendsetters at that time.)
Now there is a strong tide running the other way. Not “restorationism” in the sense of returning to the status quo ante Vatican II, but a restoration of sanity. One can see this at every level down to the parish. As everyone knows, and most have experienced directly, most young priests and seminarians are fervent, cheerfully loyal to the magisterium, and devoted to the traditions of the Church.
I have attended mass in countless Catholic parishes in many parts of the country over my 57 years of life. I think I have a somewhat larger data set to draw upon than does Mr. Dreher. The improvement at the parish level — at every level — over the last twenty years, and especially the last ten, is palpable, as is the accelerating pace of it.
In the 1980s I had to sit through about a dozen sermons in various parishes in which the teachings of the Church were quite explicitly attacked or denied (e.g. the indissolubility of marriage, the primacy of the pope, the reservation of priesthood to males, the Church’s moral teachings). For thirty years I heard not a single sermon even mentioning the sacrament of penance. And the scandalous liturgical travesties I witnessed were beyond numbering.
By contrast, over the last ten years, having attended mass at numerous parishes (I travel a lot), I have heard not a single heterodox sermon, and have heard quite a few sermons in which sacramental confession was encouraged. And it has been at least ten years since I witnessed any grave liturgical abuses. There is, moreover, a very slow (but probably accelerating) improvement in various aspects of liturgical practice. There is a vast amount that needs to be done, to be sure. There is 40 years-worth of practically non-existent catechesis to make up for. But increasing numbers are pitching in to do what has to be done.
The sweeping claim of Dreher that there is no concern at all with orthodoxy at the parish level is really extreme. Maybe those of us who are scholars are more used to qualifying our judgments and measuring our words than are insta-pundits. The comment was not only extreme, but deeply uncharitable in many ways.
My second comment is that different parts of the Church have experienced more or less turmoil at different times. In the first millennium of Christianity, the eastern Church was the scene of seemingly endless and often extremely embarrassing theological wrangling. The greatest and most destructive controversies (Arian, Nestorian, Monophysite, Monothelite, Iconoclast, etc) originated in the east and tore the eastern Church to tatters. Councils of the Church excommunicating each other, Patriarchs fleeing from their sees in fear of their life, rioting monks. The great eastern sees, including all four patriarchates, had numerous heretical incumbents. The western Church enjoyed relative theological calm in that era. (Yes, there were Donatists and others. But I am speaking relatively.)
In the second millennium of the Church, the situation reversed: the east was theologically more calm — partly due to having to survive the oppressions of first the Ottomans and then the Communists. The west became the scene of theological agitation.
Part of the reason for this is that in the first millennium, the eastern Empire was more culturally sophisticated, the West a relative backwater — especially after the fall of the Western Empire. In modern times, the situation reversed. Western Europe became the scene of extremely rapid social, economic, intellectual, and cultural changes, whereas the Orthodox lands were the (relative) cultural backwaters. The acids of modernity have eaten much more deeply into Western Christianity partly for the simple reason that the great movements of thought and feeling that define “modernity” have taken place in Western Europe and the Americas. (Even Marxism had its origin in the West.)
Yes, the seemingly constant “culture wars” within the Catholic Church over the last 40 years or so have been wearying, depressing, and often seemingly hopeless. But those who held fast have seen their fidelity and long-suffering rewarded. They always had hope, because of their trust in God. But it was hope against hope, as it were. It was hope against seemingly impossible odds. Now they have not only hope, but an increasing optimism.
I won’t disguise the fact that I think that the way in which Mr. Dreher’s piece is framed is another example of his going off half-cocked. It reinforces my belief that most people should not write social criticism until they are at least 50 years old and have had the time to reflect deeply and acquired an adequate base of experience upon which to reflect.
May 4th, 2011 | 3:26 pm
I hate what happens to the liturgy celebrated by Fr. Joe Cool, and agree that much of what passes for Catholicism is just “Be nice, and admire Jesus” with a lot of psychobabble added for flavor, but orthodox orthodoxy, for me, means being in union with the Bishop of Rome.
I think this is a required, obligatory kind of thing. So, maybe personal preference, rather than actual orthodoxy is what Mr. Dreher is talking about in the end.
May 4th, 2011 | 3:51 pm
It seems clear that Christ established a Church to which He gave its earthly, visible component divine authority. Particular members of that Church unashamedly claimed they had divine authority in the decree of the Council of Jerusalem:
“It has been decided by the Holy Spirit and ourselves …”
Acts 15:28
It is evident that the Successors of St. Peter unashamedly claimed they were the primary holders of that God-given authority in the Church. For example, in the letter of Clement to the Corinthians (who had “fired” their bishop), the Bishop of Rome writes:
“If anyone disobey the things which have been said by Him through us, let them know that they will involve themselves in transgression and in no small danger … You will afford us joy and gladness if, being obedient to the things we have written through the Holy Spirit …”
Letter to the Corinthians [59,1] [63,2]
This is all the more compelling because the Apostle John was still alive at the time, yet it was the Bishop of Rome who was called upon to deal with the Corinthian Church.
Consider these remarks of St. Irenaeus, written between 180 and 199 A.D.:
“… we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing our here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient Church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul, that Church which has the tradition and the faith which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the Apostles. For with this Church, because of its superior origin, all Churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world; and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the Apostolic tradition.”
Irenaeus, Against Heresies [3,3,2]
The belief in the primacy of the Bishop of Rome is as old as the Church itself. So, although I love and appreciate the orthodoxy of Orthodoxy, how did Rod Dreher, as a Catholic, get around this departure from tradition in Orthodoxy on his way there? Or did it just not matter to him? It does to me.
I must say though, that I can appreciate the frustration with the liturgical abuses perpetrated with the false claim they were authorized by Vatican II. Although it seems to me that the fact that the once-and-for-all sacrifice of Christ is made present on the altar overwhelms any consideration of that being brought about in a less than correct way. Not that that incorrectness doesn’t matter. It does. St. Cyprian (martyred 258 A.D.) complains about Mass being said with “unauthorized words.” It is just that the awesome reality that is brought about makes the incorrect form seem like something one can live with until the Church straightens out the liturgical abuses.
May 4th, 2011 | 5:48 pm
harry,
If you read Rod Dreher’s piece called Orthodoxy and Me, you may not agree with his reasons for leaving the Catholic Church, but you will certainly understand them better. (The link he himself gives doesn’t work, so I found another site that reproduced the piece.) I think, putting it very simply, that when some people see the state the Church is in, their faith in its truth claims falters, including the claim about Peter’s successors as Bishop of Rome as popes. Some believe Peter was never in Rome, let alone as its bishop.
May 4th, 2011 | 5:55 pm
Some Catholic bishops and priests have a lot to answer for.
May 4th, 2011 | 5:55 pm
Or he could have tried a good Eastern Catholic church, and had both orthodoxy and catholicism. But when you let emotionalism get too strong an influence over your decisions . . .
May 4th, 2011 | 6:23 pm
As I commented on the WaPo blog at the time:
I guess the tragedy is that Mr. Dreher didn’t see that there are Eastern churches in communion with Rome that have the benefits of Eastern Orthodoxy that he describes–beautiful liturgy, freedom from much culture-war strife, focus on orthodox teaching–along with communion with the bishop of Rome that all the Orthodox Fathers of the East took for granted.
May 4th, 2011 | 6:28 pm
You may want to read this for another view:
http://venuleius.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/package-deals-postscript/
May 4th, 2011 | 9:47 pm
There is a bitter irony in the fact that Dreher left the Catholic Church over the pedophile issue, and yet the priest and bishop who received him into the Orthodox Church were themselves allowing a CONVICTED child molester to serve as a spiritual father in the diocese (see http://pokrov.org/display.asp?ds=Person&id=39). Of course, Dreher has said absolutely nothing about THAT situation.
It’s therefore no surprise that Dreher’s spiritual behavior has become increasingly UNorthodox, and he is now engaged in (what was until last weekend) a covert war against bishops and priests in the Orthodox Church:
http://ocanews.org/news/TheTruthAboutOCATruth4.30.11.html
May 4th, 2011 | 9:49 pm
My wife and I are former Episcopal converts to the Catholic Church living in the Diocese of Arlington (Northern Virginia). Our experience of the Catholic Church has been significantly different from Mr. Dreher’s. While there are lots of “Our Lady of Pizza Hut” parish buildings from the 1970′s building boom, since at least 2000 the dozen or so new parishes built have all been very traditional. More importantly, we’ve made a point of visiting as many parishes as possible (25 and counting). While some may have music not to our liking, we’ve never encountered a Mass that wasn’t reverent and fully in accord with the Church’s teaching and rules for worship. This will only improve with the new English translation of the Mass. In addition, our parish offers Confession on three weekdays as well as on Saturdays. Even with three priests the lines are such that its not unusual to wait 30 minutes or more. Finally, we have 24 hour Eucharistic Adoration on Friday/Saturdays. Ours is not an unusual parish for this Diocese — others are similar. I note all this not to brag but to challenge the idea that “most” Catholic parishes are not reverent or orthodox. Mr. Dreher also asserts that “there is very little orthodoxy in the U.S. Catholic Church.” By this I assume he’s also referring to its leadership. It’s hard to see the validity of that claim in light of people such as Archbishop Dolan of NYC and Bishop Chaput of Denver. With regard to the Orthodox Church, I would agree that the cultural wars are not as important. However, one of the attractions of the Catholic Church to my wife and I was its willingness to engage the prevailing culture on issues such as the sanctity of life, something the Orthodox Church (with some exceptions such as Archbishop Jonah) does not appear to want to do. Finally, I too share his concern with the sexual scandals facing the Catholic Church, but the Catholic Church does not claim that its people are perfect (nor does any other church, including the Orthodox). Rather, as I said at my confirmation, “I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.” I’m sorry Mr. Dreher had a negative experience as a Catholic but as he put it himself “ugliness, even a sense of spiritual desolation, does not obviate the truth.”
May 4th, 2011 | 10:01 pm
Or this: http://ocanews.org/news/TheTruthAboutOCATruth4.30.11.htmlhttp://ocanews.org/news/TheTruthAboutOCATruth4.30.11.html
May 5th, 2011 | 5:34 am
I don’t really have a dog in this ecclesiastical food-fight, but the article forces a question I raised on an “on the square” article a few weeks ago. Bottom line was that the priest was denying the resurrection in his homily. It was so bad that she told her kids to ignore the Priest. The subsequent debate was over whether the parishioner should bring it up with the parish priest or just go somewhere else.
What I wanted to know then, and what Dreher’s article raises for me now, is just how heretical does a priest have to get before he is subject to discipline and excommunication. At what point does the RC church simply say that if you want to deny the resurrection of Christ, then you might be better off with the Episcopalians, or the Unitarians, or some other liberal Protestant denomination. You know, sort of a “here we stand, we can do no other” type of thing.
May 5th, 2011 | 8:49 am
That’s what I mean when I say that Dreher didn’t become Catholic till he became Orthodox. While I don’t know what he’s said about that particular situation, I do know that elsewhere he has openly acknowledged the faults of the Orthodox church. He doesn’t think the Orthodox church is perfect or its bishops all well-behaved. It’s just that he has found himself with nowhere to go. God has forced him finally to recognize that the holiness of the sacraments and the graces of fellowship flow not from the personal holiness of the members (whether sheep or shepherds) but from the promises of Christ.
It seems to me that included in the term “personal holiness” is also “institutional holiness”, in the sense that, for instance, good institutional structures for reporting and dealing with sexual abuse in a reasonable way are contingent elements of the church that rely on the virtue and rationality of its members. Jesus never said, “Go ye therefore into all the world, teaching it how properly to organize a bureaucracy. And, lo, my audits are with you always, even until the end of the age.”
If Dreher thought that the legitimacy of the claims of the Catholic Church were in any essential way grounded in the awesomeness of said church, he should have read Paul Johnson’s gut-wrenching histories of Christianity before he joined. There was never a generation in which the church was not messed up. Not one.
May 5th, 2011 | 12:57 pm
I am a little bit surprised by some of the comments. I believe that the majority of them are reflective of a Pre-Vatican II understanding of the Papal office, and are not in accord with recent ecclesiological developments reflected in such things as the Ut Unum Sint, the Balamand agreement, the Revenna Documents, and most recently Benedict’s book the Light of the World. Rob followed his conscience, a conscience that was formed in large part by negligence on the part of the pope. That is to say that he was scandalized, and so he left in favor of what Rome calls its “sister church.” In the face of these types of scandals one should not point at the scandalized and mockingly scold them for leaving the ‘successor of Peter.’ That is very offensive. If you truly wish to follow the Pope then you may want to reflect upon the Balamand agreements words, “While the inviolable freedom of persons and their obligation to follow the requirements of their conscience remain secure, in the search for re-establishing unit there is no question of conversion of people from one Church to the other in order to ensure their salvation. There is a question of achieving together the will of Christ for his own and the design of God for his Church by means of a common quest by the Churches for a full accord on the content of the faith and its implications. This effort is being carried on in the current theological dialogue.” In other words Rob’s salvation is not necessarily at issue as he follows his conscience, so what exactly is the problem?
May 5th, 2011 | 2:29 pm
Neither the EOC nor the RCC has an airtight irresistable case for its claims, therefore we can not assume ignorance on the one hand or ill-will on the other in persons who in good conscience choose one over the other. One’s salvation is in question only when he becomes convinced of the truth and chooses not to act accordingly, and even then it’s not our job as Catholics or Orthodox to make that judgment.
May 5th, 2011 | 11:14 pm
Dear BobG,
The problem is that Rod Dreher — and that is his name not Rob — made some rather vicious statements about the Catholic Church in this country. No one is attacking Eastern Orthodoxy here, or Dreher’s choice to embrace it.
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