David Bentley Hart Is Not a Marcionite

Far be it for me to get too embroiled in one of many online fisticuffs over the works of David Bentley Hart, the recent fallout over Tradition and Apocalypse is as baffling as it is ridiculous. Tradition, which at its core is a critique of Cardinal Newman’s Essay on the Development of Doctrine, also features what I have elsewhere dubbed an “iconoclastic critical-historical reading of the Fall narrative.” This, along with some of Hart’s earlier remarks on various Old Testament lessons, has prompted some mental midgets to accuse Hart of—wait for it…—Marcionism!

Marcionism, in the popular polemical lexicon, is an empty-headed rejection of the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures) that was vanquished successfully in the early centuries of Christianity. Marcion of Sinope, that deeply religious man who promoted what he believed to be the authentic Gospel of Jesus Christ as found in a large portion of the Pauline corpus and an edited version of St. Luke’s Gospel, is the ancient villain; his contemporary disciple is apparently Hart. Others who are either accidentally or intentionally ignorant of the Old Testament are sometimes accused of Marcionism as well. Indeed, I have heard at least one Orthodox cleric chide his co-religionists for being de facto Marcionites. Perhaps he has a point, though what I think this priest is actually lamenting has less to do with an ancient heresy and more to do with general ignorance of the Scriptures.

The problem with accusing Hart or almost anyone of Marcionism, particularly when the concern is that a person either rejects the Old Testament or, in reading it, submits it to a critical-historical interpretation, is that it ignores Marcion’s own views. Marcion did not deny the historicity of the Old Testament; he believed it to be literally true. In his groundbreaking monograph Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God, Adolf von Harnack goes to great lengths to demonstrate the degree to which Marcion took the Old Testament books seriously with nary a thought given to the possibility that they were distorted through alterations and interpolations as Marcion believed much of the New Testament had been. Moreover, Harnack also reveals that despite his low view of the judgmental “creator-god” of the Old Testament and his inferiority to the merciful “alien-god” of the New, the Old Testament remained a source of instruction.

Hart, by his own lights at least, falls into the orthodox Christian exegetical tradition where allegory and typology can have their say. These abominable interpretive twins were anathema to Marcion. Equally critical is the fact that Hart has never posited two deities, and despite accepting the findings of critical-historical scholarship concerning the origins of certain Old Testament narratives, he makes clear in Tradition that these stories are not without theological value. If anything, Hart appears much more interested in where these narratives, regardless of their “empirical” origins, fit within the story of salvation history rather than casting them aside as irrelevant myths that need not occupy serious Christians.

It is all but impossible to be a Marcionite in any legitimate sense without accepting Marcion’s unqualified belief that the creator-god of the Old Testament is not the alien-god of the New, that is, the merciful and loving Father of Jesus Christ. Although there will always be limits to what we can confidently believe about Marcion’s true thoughts, enough remnants of his intellectual work remain in the extant writings of his most rabid theological opponents for us to be sure that Marcionism had nothing to do with a radical rejection of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Some might opine that this is all beside the point. Hart is dangerous, unorthodox, misleading, corrupting, vile, and so on and so forth; it matters not if he is truly a Marcionite. Maybe. If Hart were a Marcionite, presumably he would stay in line with the movement’s namesake by telling all with ears to hear about the higher alien-god of the New Testament, the one who remained hidden from human history until he revealed himself exclusively through the Gospel preached by St. Paul and kept, following some precise excisions and emendations, in Luke. A rhetoric of love, mercy, and peace would likely flow from Hart’s fingertips, not vitriolic dismissals carrying enough scorn to make the creator-god blush.

Hart, like most of his followers and critics, remains thoroughly Christian, however.

The 7/27/22 Post

I made passing mention the other week of Catholic (and, to a lesser extent, Eastern Orthodox) social media being haunted by professional grifters, that is, those who blend armchair theology and unctuous spirituality outrage porn. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, grifting became so out of control that the charlatans turned on each other. Traditional Catholics chided far-right conservative Catholics for being weak which, in turn, prompted the latter to accuse the former of being crypto-sedevacantists. QAnon-style conspiracy theories spilled the banks of national politics while far too many of my co-religionists set aside prayer, the Bible, and common sense to hang their souls on the words of an episcopus vagans. It does not look like the crazy train plans to slow down anytime in 2022.

Meanwhile, over in the (neo-)integralist universe, the march for authoritarianism-for-authoritarianism’s sake continues. Gone are the days when this “movement” (if it can be called that) possessed spiritual roots; now it is the equivalent of a warped role-playing game where sorcery is secondary to a rarely mitigated lust for the last dregs of power. Confused over what it is they even stand for these days, it is not hard to find integralists fawning over China; making plans to relocate to Hungary; and praising Vladimir Putin’s murderous intentions toward Ukraine because somehow that beleaguered land has become the battleground for a clash of civilizations. It is meet and right that the integralists are increasingly viewed as cosplay jokesters who have worn out their welcome at the discussion table. They cannot demand to be taken seriously when they flee from criticism and opt for personal smears over intellectual engagement.

As for the Orthodox, well…it is a mixed bag. With a radically smaller audience than their estranged Catholic brethren, grifting cannot pay the bills. Orthodox blog-dom, like Catholic blog-dom, is radically less interesting today than it was 10-20 years ago. The loudest Anglophone Orthodox voices that I have come across online lack theological sophistication. These folks learned their history from YouTube videos and their understanding of anything not culled from one-sided polemics is minimal at best. Some of these lads (and yes, they are almost exclusively lads) are well-meaning; they want to have something—anything—to say that draws clicks. Unfortunately, the markets for lamenting over the Fourth Crusade or talking nonsense about the oft invoked yet poorly understood energies/essence distinction collapsed long ago.

Some might say I am complaining and complaining needlessly at that. Perhaps my approach to Christian social media should be the same as my approach to professional wrestling: Watch what I like and shut up. I confess that I have no grand solution to any of this foolishness. The best proposal I can draw up is for everyone to sit down, be quiet, and watch Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. It is my current litmus test for the soul. I dare say that any person who spends approximately 90 minutes with this one-inch animated creature should renounce their professional guile while gaining a genuine appreciation for the wonders which surround us daily. Will it work? Doubtful…but I still have hope.

Unrequired Impressions on an Ecclesiastical Standoff

Nota Bene: What follows is off-the-cuff, unrefined, and unapologetically impressionistic. If you feel the need to get angry over anything below or tell me I am full of it, all I have to say is, “Tranquilo.”

I have, for the past few years, been effectively “retired” from web-logging. There is too much going on in my life to keep up with it and besides, “Catholic blogging” (for lack of a better term) has descended into grifterism. Gone are the halcyon days of the 00s-10s when both Catholic and Orthodox bloggers wrote serious pieces (and sometimes not-so-serious pieces) that both challenged each other’s particular stances while exhibiting genuine self-criticism. Sure, some folks were better at it than others, but almost all of them have moved on. Indeed, some have even left their previous confessions for new communions or, in one notable instance, abandoned Christianity altogether. Such is life. Although I am aware of several Catholic and Orthodox blogs that still exhibit a genuine desire to probe “things ecclesiastical” in a charitable, exacting, and critical manner or, in the alternative, present interesting tidbits of history, spirituality, and theology, I think the “glory days” are gone, or maybe just on hold.

All of that aside, the reason I have (temporarily) returned to this blog is because several people asked me to weigh-in on the recent “Mexican standoff” featuring Steve Skojec (1 Peter Five), Rod Dreher (American Conservative), and Edward Feser (academic and writer). I am not going to rehearse in depth their various arguments; you can find their writings easily enough. The short and the long of it is that Skojec, who has fancied himself a champion of traditional Catholicism for a number of years, has been undergoing a somewhat understandable, though sideways, “spiritual crisis” concerning the state of contemporary Catholicism. Having had a couple of those myself over the years, I cannot blame him. Nor do I blame Skojec for being public about it. It seems he is looking for reassurance, though it also seems he may be looking for it in all the wrong places. The online Catholic world of today is not the online Catholic (or, for that matter, Orthodox) world of a decade or two ago. Despite rabid disagreements, folks on both sides of the divide used to be fairly well-meaning, even if their advice failed to hit the mark. Today, online Catholicism in particularly is a terrain littered with hucksters, grifters, and triumphalists looking to advance various agendas to an unprecedented degree. Skojec seems to have left himself vulnerable to their machinations.

Of course, “agendaism” is not unique to Catholics. Consider Dreher: A former Catholic who went through a very public “spiritual crisis” that apparently brought him to Eastern Orthodoxy back in the mid-00s. Realizing that there was not enough public scandal in his own communion to keep-up the clicks, he has spent an inordinate amount of his post-Catholic career harping on Catholicism while also drawing from (plagiarizing?) Catholic thought in order to bolster his pop dystopian screeds. And so, it comes as little surprise that Dreher immediately piggybacked on Skojec’s crisis to retell, for the umpteenth time, his own. Concomitantly, Dreher has invited Skojec to look to Orthodoxy because, according to Dreher, it has all of these bells and whistles that Catholicism lacks. This is where Feser enters the fray. Regardless of what one thinks of Feser’s Thomas-heavy Catholic theology, he is correct that the Catholic tradition, broadly understood, is not lacking in the riches of the East. However, those riches are too often buried under the rubble of modernity, if not marginalized in favor of an attenuated Latinism that has become depressingly normative over the centuries.

All that said, the reason I was asked to comment on this is because it is something of a public record (though perhaps an increasingly obscure point of personal history) that I spent seven years in the Eastern Orthodox Church after returning to Christianity in my 20s before returning to the Catholic fold in 2011. Members of my extended family remain Eastern Orthodox and indeed my brother will likely be ordained to the diaconate in the coming year. I was married in the Orthodox Church and three of my four children received the sacraments of initiation there. Canonically, I have been and remain Greek Catholic, though I maintain strong ties to traditional Latin Catholicism. While I did experience some hostility toward Orthodoxy in the years after I left, all of that has abated. My “spiritual crisis,” if you will, did not become clear to me until years later. It was not a “crisis about Orthodoxy” so much as a crisis in myself, one that invited me to issue public condemnations of my prior confession in return for inordinate public support offered by Catholics who had been looking to get some digs in on their estranged Eastern brethren. I hope that is water under the bridge now. I have apologized for it. And if my apologies were not sufficient, please know I am issuing them again.

Returning to the main point, I cannot stress enough that the grass is not greener, regardless of where you sit on the East/West divide. (Oh, and before I continue, let me make note that “the East” is not monolithic, but since Oriental Orthodoxy is rarely contemplated as an escape route for Catholics and Orthodox, I am leaving it to the side here.) American Orthodoxy is a backwater. That is not an insult; it is empirical reality. Though most American Orthodox jurisdictions inflate their numbers, the truth is there are likely as many Orthodox in the United States as there are Catholics in the Archdiocese of Chicago. For some that is a bug, but for others it is a feature. American Orthodoxy does present itself as an enclave at times, historically ethnic but today increasingly ideological, that resists penetration from some unspecified horror known as “the West.” It often comes across as self-consciously exotic, even if many converts have infused it with bland, sometimes even pernicious, American religiosity. To put it another way, American Orthodoxy is a confederation of churches full of saints and sinners; devotion and destitution; liturgy and lies; holiness and hate; coherency and contradictions; etc. That is, it is not all that different from American Catholicism.

I would, of course, be remiss if I failed to mention that Orthodoxy does have certain advantages on average over Catholicism. The liturgy is pretty, if you are into that sort of thing. Most Orthodox clerics, though typically lacking the training and sophistication of Catholic priests, are disinclined to preach heresy on Sunday or put their own “spin” on the Gospel to make it “relevant.” At the same time, due to a certain insularity imposed by circumstance more than intent, Orthodox priests unwittingly perpetuate any number of harmful myths that only serve to exacerbate Catholic/Orthodox tensions. Even those “learned Orthodox” out there who have penned books claiming to “expose the errors” of Catholicism routinely miss the mark, and sometimes laughably so. As a Catholic turned Orthodox turned Catholic, I cannot tell you how mortifying it was for me to listen to Orthodox priests speak raw nonsense about the Catholic Church, including such disturbing delights as: Catholics believe everything the pope says is infallible; Catholics worship Mary; Transubstantiation is a scientific explanation of the Eucharist; Catholics can buy their way out of hell; Catholics reject theosis; Catholics reject icons; etc. Oh the list goes on and on and on…

None of this is to say that the Catholic Church is without its highs and lows. I doubt I need to repeat them here. As a Greek Catholic, I am painfully aware that in America especially, we are the redheaded stepchildren of Catholicism. (Hey, if we weren’t, there would be no Orthodox Church in America.) Because Catholicism is so much larger than Orthodoxy in America, its sins are magnified exponentially. Clergy sex abuse, financial scandals, doctrinal departures, politicization of the Faith, and so on and so forth, exist in both communions; it is typically the Catholic Church’s gross failures that draw widespread public attention. Nothing is more painful to a Catholic who has departed the “faith of his fathers” for Orthodoxy to come face to face with Orthodoxy’s moral failings. This is why, I suspect, individuals like Dreher have more than once turned a blind eye to them; it disrupts the narrative of “pure holiness” or “purer holiness” to find that sinners prowl about all of Christianity seeking the ruin of souls.

At the close of business, it is not for me to say where Skojec or any other Catholic experiencing some sort of crisis should go. I was admonished by a good friend yesterday for reading the whole affair cynically, and so I’ll try not to. Feser has given Skojec (and others) some fine advice and Dreher, ever the opportunist, is just doing what he does to make money (click, click, click). It makes little sense to me that a Catholic distressed over decentralization (synodality), birth control, divorce-and-remarriage, doctrinal imprecision, and the erosion of legality would embrace a communion that has no problem with any of those things. To accept Orthodoxy is to accept a very messy ecclesiology, at least by idealized Latin lights. Spiritually speaking, solace can be found with a prayer rope just as easily as it can be had with a rosary. St. Seraphim of Sarov taught many beautiful things, but so, too, did St. Francis of Assisi. As the Orthodox priest Alexander Schmemann observed, for the duration of the Church, there have always been more lukewarm Christians than otherwise. Fervency is fleeting, no matter which church doorstep one darkens.

Meanwhile, Out East…

A lot is being made in both the secular and ecclesiastical media of the current rift between the Moscow Patriarchate (MP) of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of Constantinople, otherwise known as the Ecumenical Patriarchate (EP). EP/MP tensions are nothing new. For several years now there has been a cold war between the two churches over the question of primacy. The MP, desperate to be seen as the “Mother Ship” of world Orthodoxy, has enacted a zero-tolerance policy for any talk of “primacy” that is anything more than a mere “primacy of honor.” The EP, bereft of practical political power and global influence, has doubled-down on not only promoting, but also exercising, its ecclesiastical authority by inching ever closer to granting Ukrainian Orthodox a Tomos of Autocephaly which in effect would allow the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to function without oversight from Moscow. It’s not difficult to see how disruptive this move is to Russia’s geopolitical vision and the “Russian World” ideology which the MP, as the Russian state’s vassal church, is tasked with promoting.

Some Catholics, burned-out on the scandals running wild in their own backyard, are quietly (or not-so-quietly) pointing fingers at the Orthodox Church’s confederate governance model. Without a three-dimensional understanding of primacy, the Orthodox are doomed to fall into jurisdictional and other pragmatic spats that typically end up taking on a dogmatic character. The MP has declared that its faithful can no longer receive sacraments from bishops and priests who fall under the EP. In fact, the MP has even banned its adherents from praying on Mt. Athos (Orthodoxy’s holiest site next to the Kremlin) and will apparently cease recognizing baptisms performed by EP clerics.

Whatever the demerits of Orthodoxy’s governance structure, it is unrealistic to think that these sorts of politically motivated, high-level spats would cease just because the Bishop of Rome is available to mediate. First-millennium Christianity is packed full of incidences whereby Local Church A breaks communion with Local Church B even as A and B remain in communion with Local Church C (who, as fate would have it, is out-of-communion with Local Church D). Moreover, the existence of a hyper-centralized Roman governance model in Catholicism, where the pope is expected to micromanage a communion comprised of over a billion souls, has done almost nothing to rein-in moral, doctrinal, and liturgical error for the last six decades. I have been guilty in the past of snickering at the radical divergences in doctrinal and theological positions that Orthodox Christians hold, but the Catholic reality isn’t much better, especially when there is a growing number of conservatives and traditionalists who maintain that one need not listen to the pope “when he teaches error” (according to…?).

If the EP is serious about handing autocephaly to the Ukrainians, then we should all expect the rift (schism?) between it and the MP to last for no less than a century. Until Russia suffers the sort of catastrophic implosion that only rapid depopulation and gross economic mismanagement can bring about, the MP will have the resources to pressure most non-EP churches into at least tacitly supporting its radically diminished view of “primacy” while further isolating the EP. For the MP, “primacy” in Orthodoxy is a “primacy of power,” backed by raw numbers and concrete political support. History is an inconvenience to the MP. History tells us nothing more than a rather sad tale of politics and violence converging together at certain key points to make the Russian Orthodox Church what it is today. Its patriarchal status, after all, was coerced from the EP centuries ago and even Ukraine itself, the wellspring of Kyivan-Rus’ Christianity, was snatched from Constantinople in the 17th century.

This is one reason among many why the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), an authentic heir of the Church of Kyiv, is such a sore point for the MP. The UGCC’s very existence defies the erroneous notion that Ukraine is and always has been an extension of Russia. Should an autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church rise up in Ukraine, it would further lay waste to Russian fibbing about its own history and the status of its own church. Granted, it may take decades, even centuries, for a refreshed Ukrainian Orthodox Church to shake the Muscovite dust from its boots, but there is a reason to hope that by doing so, perhaps Ukraine’s Orthodox and Greco-Catholic populations can move closer to fulfilling the vision of the late Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, namely a single Ukrainian Church in communion with Rome.

I believe that Catholics should resist harboring delectatio morosa over Orthodoxy’s present woes. Internal ruptures in Orthodoxy are unlikely to yield Catholic unity. That is to say, it is highly doubtful that the Orthodox, tired of incessant infighting, will flee to Rome in the coming years. All too aware of how Rome tends to treat its Eastern brethren, no Orthodox Christian is eager to become a second-class Catholic citizen. Catholics, particularly Latin Catholics, should probably also come to grips with the fact that their own ecclesiastical haunt is arguably even more fractured than Orthodoxy’s, even if the “official line” from Rome remains (as it ever does) that all is fine; there is nothing to see here; and who am I to judge?

The Ecclesiastical Politics of Inevitability and Eternity

In his latest book, The Road to Unfreedom, Timothy Snyder contrasts what he calls “the politics of inevitability” with “the politics of eternity.” In Snyder’s words, the former is “a sense that the future is just more of the present, that the laws of progress are known, that there are no alternatives, and therefore nothing really to be done.” This form of politics is acutely known in both the United States and Europe, albeit with different nuances and emphases. The politics of eternity, which in Snyder’s opinion lie at the heart of Vladmir Putin’s Russia, “places one nation at the center of a cyclical story of victimhood. Time is no longer a line into the future, but a circle that endlessly returns the same threats from the past.”

Transplanted to an ecclesiastical context, I wonder if it isn’t too much to say that the Catholic Church, with its internalization of liberal premises during the last century embraces the politics of inevitability while the Eastern Orthodox Church, a large segment of which is beholden to Putinism, labors under the politics of eternity. Eastern Orthodoxy’s narrative of victimhood, which is often applied as readily against Muslims as it is Catholics, has become one of its distinguishing features in the last century or so. The Orthodox, and the nations in which they hold denominational control, have no particular responsibility for native corruption, material scarcity, and social disorder; “the Latins” in 1204, “the Turks” in 1453, the “Uniates” in [insert every year here] have entered into a pan-national, trans-historical conspiracy to erode the integrity of God’s one Holy and Apostolic Church and those secular powers duty-bound to protect it.

As for the politics of inevitability, it has been commonplace—at least up until the reign of Pope Francis—for Catholics to turn a blind eye to the problems in the Church and society on the belief that they will work themselves out. Because Christ promised to St. Peter that he was the rock upon which the Church was to be built and “the gates of hell will not prevail,” everything from a decades-long sex scandal to a banalized liturgy to a collapse in sound catechesis are interpreted as mere bumps on the road to a Church just as accustomed to speaking human rights-jargon as it is preaching the Gospel. The Catholic Church, now tasked with being the world’s largest NGO, is present to cheer on and support the inevitable triumph of liberal democracy, freedom of conscience, economic flourishing, and so on and so forth. Just as sure as Christians once believed Christ will come again, the Catholic Church instills an intramundane eschatology among its faithful where the light of liberalism will finally illumine all.

Francis’s pontificate has not overshadowed the Catholic politics of inevitability, at least not wholly. While certain conservatives in the Church may be having buyer’s remorse over Francis’s election and are starting to wonder if the new ultramontanism that swept the Church during John Paul II’s reign was a good idea or not, by and large they believe that better is around the corner. The next pope, perhaps a prelate from “Holy Africa,” shall come to power and correct the errors and the Franciscan papacy. It’s not that Francis is a “bad pope” (for there can be no such thing!) or a “heretic” (what’s that?); it’s just that his “style,” his “charisma,” and his “lack of sophistication” concerning theology and doctrine have sown confusion—the sort that can still be disposed of quite easily and without any significant harm being inflicted to the Mystical Body of Christ.

The politics of eternity, the only politics the Eastern Orthodox seem willing to embrace on a mass scale, may keep their communion ostensibly safe from theological, spiritual, or intellectual trends that could upset their comfortable calcification, but at what cost to the Great Commission? With the exception of some minor incursions into the geographic west (Europe and America), the vast expanses of the world constitute a hostile “other” that threatens Orthodoxy’s wellbeing. For Orthodoxy, now is the time for its particular churches to rally together under the protectorate of a single, state-backed ecclesiastical juggernaut (namely the Russian Orthodox Church) rather than tolerate new assertions of autocephaly. The Ukrainian question, for instance, is about more than the historic rights of the Ukrainian Church; it is about the soul of Orthodoxy itself, including its willingness to accept being true to itself while no longer denying its position as both an heir of and contributor to what may still be called “Western Civilization.”

Should the Orthodox ever break free of their politics of eternity, it is doubtful they will immediately submit to the politics of inevitability. Orthodox history, which is inextricably bound up with the history of Mediterranean, Slavic, and Arab peoples, harbors a harsh realism deep in its bosom; nothing is truly inevitable except the Second Coming and nothing is more impossible than the return of Byzantium. Can Orthodoxy overcome this tension in its character if it ever gets past the politics of eternity? Yes, it can, and the likelihood of it doing so appears, at least at this moment, equal to the chances of Catholicism shifting away from inevitability to what one Cistercian monk called “the politics of nostalgia.”

David Bentley Hart on American Orthodoxy

To my surprise, David Bentley Hart’s 2017 Fordham lecture, “Orthodoxy in America and America’s Orthodoxies,” received very little attention despite being available for free on YouTube. (I confess that I didn’t take the time to sit down and watch the whole thing until last evening.) For those familiar with Hart, it contains much of what you would expect: a humorous anecdote concerning convert-itis; several references to Orthodoxy’s penchant for ethnocentrism and particularism over the universal mission of the Church; reservations concerning the dominance of neo-Palamism and the neo-Patristic synthesis; and frustration with Orthodoxy’s kneejerk anti-Latin/anti-Western mentality. Hart, a convert from high-church Anglicanism, has mixed feelings about the influx of Evangelicals into Orthodoxy, especially since they carry a peculiarly American-style religious sensibility into the Orthodox fold. (Oh, and just to rile the kids up, Hart declares Fr. Sergius Bulgakov to be the greatest systematic theologian of the 20th century.)

Hart’s relationship to the Orthodox world has always been a rocky one. His first book, The Beauty of the Infinite, received heavy praise from Catholic and Protestant theologians; the Orthodox either ignored it or, as in the case of the theologian Fr. John McGuckin, gave it a chilly reception. The word on the street in certain Orthodox circles is that Hart is not a true “Orthodox theologian” because he both leans on Western sources and opts not to tether his thinking to neo-Palamism. Perhaps this is why Hart has, either by his own hand or those of his publishers, been rebranded over the years as a religious writer, a cultural critic, a philosopher, and, most recently, a translator of the New Testament. Although certain conservative-to-reactionary Orthodox voices on the Internet continue to decry Hart, it is safe to say he now transcends his confession’s internal quarrels, at least in the United States.

In listening attentively to Hart’s lectures, I could hear echoes of Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s frustrations with Orthodoxy in America, such as its insularity, infighting, and internal divisions. Schmemann believed that for Orthodoxy to survive and thrive on this side of the Atlantic (or Pacific), it must shed its accidents and embrace in full the universal message of Christ. Today, nearly half-a-century after the controversial establishment of the Orthodox Church in America, that still hasn’t come to pass. What did come to pass after Schmemann’s all-too-early repose in 1982 was a grand flux of Evangelical Christians into the Orthodox fold. Hart notes that though the actual number of coverts to Orthodoxy remains quite small, the proportion of converts to cradles (i.e. those born into the Orthodox Church) is significant. Native Orthodox Christians wishing to hold on to their old ways, safe from the influence of outsiders, have lost the fight.

Hart, a frequent critic of American religiosity and the culture it helps uphold, is not entirely thrilled with this development even as he carries the hope that the kind of Orthodoxy rising up in the United States can shed itself of both Evangelical-inspired fundamentalism and the Old-World mentality that sees Orthodoxy as little more than a cultural expression, perhaps even an extension of the nation-state. Hart has no time for those converts who wish to cloak themselves in foreign garb by appropriating another culture in the hopes of being “authentically” Orthodox. American Orthodox must be Orthodox Americans, with their own peculiarities, but neither unmoored from the fruits of the Christian East (Divine Liturgy, Church Fathers, Eastern spirituality, etc.) nor beholden to any form of chauvinism.

Some of what Hart expresses reminds me of what a kind Orthodox priest (himself a convert from Catholicism) once told me, namely that God could not save him as a Russian for he wasn’t a Russian; God could only save him as an Irishman (or, rather, an American with deep Irish roots). Fascination with Orthodoxy’s ethnic tapestry is praiseworthy so long as it does not degenerate into idolization. To say that lesson has not been learned yet would be an understatement. For a certain segment of American Orthodoxy’s convert population, Vladimir Putin’s illusionary “Holy Russia” redux has become the Orthodox Mothership patrolling the globe ensuring purity of belief in Russia’s divine mission against the horrors of liberalism. That problem, that pathology, warrants separate and specified treatment, however.

Unfair to Dreher?

Recently, over at that great forum of learned and calm disputation known as Facebook, my friend Conor Dugan posted a link to his recent review of Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option for Catholic World Report. Although I disagree with some of Dugan’s comments on the book, I am not interested in critiquing it. In response to Dugan’s post, Dreher himself wrote the following: “I do not mind at all constructive criticism, or any kind of criticism, as long as it challenges what I actually wrote in the book. But so many of these reviews don’t even do that. It’s bizarre. I wonder why that is?” This prompted me to write the following reply (to which I expect no answer to):

Because, in all fairness, much of what you wrote is derivative and seems divorced from the intellectual moorings you wanted it to have. Also keep in mind that no matter how much time goes on, people won’t forget the manner in which you left the Catholic Church; besmirched the Catholic Church for years in your writings; and yet repair to Catholicism whenever you need to add some heft to your positions (heft which you apparently cannot find from the Orthodox).

As I have noted elsewhere, people have been doing what you are now marketing for years—decades even. It’s not new. It doesn’t require a catchy title. And unlike what you are proposing, these folks—particularly traditional Catholic communities such as the one found in St. Mary’s, Kansas — aren’t backing down or retreating from the world. They are working — to quote St. Pius X’s motto—”to restore all things in Christ.” There is very little of that restorationist spirit in your book.

Please understand that I am saying this in all honesty and charity. While I would agree that some criticisms of your book have been uncharitable, I think in your understandable desire to defend yourself, you are overlooking some of the “meta” issues surrounding your work.

Although an argument could be made that Dreher’s confessional leanings should not affect the reception of his work, the truth of the matter is that he does strike a lot of people, particularly Catholics, as an opportunist who leans heavily on the Catholic tradition (or, at least, his own interpretation of it) while simultaneously rejecting the Church which gave birth to it. Moreover, Dreher appears to be insensitive to the fact that there are those in the West—including Catholics—who oppose Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church not out of some naïve love for secular liberalism but because of Russia’s longstanding and ongoing history of aggression toward the Catholic Church.

For instance, Dreher is quick to defend Russia from its Western critics, but fails to take note of Russia’s illegal actions in Crimea and east Ukraine, including backing the persecution of Greek Catholics in the region. While Dreher recently opined that he “bristle[s]… at restrictions on religious liberty in Russia, in particular on the freedom of minority forms of Christianity,” he quickly writes this off as little more than an expression of his “Westernized view of how religion relates to society.” Now that Dreher is apparently cognizant of this, does that mean he now realizes that his “Westernized view” is wrong and that, as an Orthodox Christian, he should adopt the “Russian view”? That’s all fine and well if he does, but he should realize that by aligning with the ideology of the Russian state and its vassal church, Dreher places himself directly at odds with Catholicism—the very thing he needs above all else to advance his idea (or career).

There is more. As already noted above and elsewhere on this web-log, Dreher’s “Benedict Option” brand has been chided as derivative, incomplete, and retreatist. There are Catholic communities all over the world which have been living out what Dreher calls the “Benedict Option” for decades, and none of them saw fit to promote themselves through blogs, TV appearances, and book deals. They are simply working and living as they are supposed to be—in accordance with the timeless principles of the Catholic Church. And even those who find it impossible to relocate to an intentional Catholic community still find it possible to practice their faith without succumbing to the machinations of secular liberalism. And so it shouldn’t be difficult to see why Catholics might be put off that Dreher—an unapologetic rejecter of Catholicism—is hijacking their way of life in order to fill his bank account.

While some lines of criticism against The Benedict Option book do miss the mark (particularly those lines of criticism coming from liberal Christians), I do believe that in Dreher’s race to defend himself from all charges, he overlooks why so many Catholics are unsympathetic to his various projects. What can he do to correct that situation? One might hope, at the very least, that he publicly repents of the ways in which he has uncharitably attacked the Catholic Church since his departure more than a decade ago. I don’t see that happening, however, but with God all things are possible.

How Not to Convert the Russian Orthodox

The following is an excerpt from a translated article by Fr. Sergey Golovanov, a Russian Greco-Catholic priest concerning the 1920 Jesuit mission to Istanbul, Turkey. The full text can be read over at the Holy Unia web-log here. (Thanks to Fr. Athanasius McVay for bringing it to my attention.)

In 1920, the superior general of the Society of Jesus ordered Fathers Baille, Jansseand, and Tyszkiewicz to go to Georgia. The war prevented the Jesuit missionaries from reaching their goal and stopped them in Istambul, where there were many thousands of Russian refugees. All Russians felt anxious and feared an attack by the Bolsheviks or extradition back to Soviet Russia. With the cooperation of the occupational administration of the Entente, the Jesuits organized relief action among Russians. Lois Baille, SJ, founded St. George’s Residential School for orphans. He appointed a Russian Latin-rite priest, Sipiagin, as director of the school. Sipiagin came from a family with mixed Russian-Polish origins. He was enthusiastic about the Latin rite and Western culture. Stanislas Tyszkiewicz, SJ, set up a hostel for Russian proselytes. He taught the Catholic Catechism. The proselytes passed an examination after several months, repudiated Orthodoxy, made a profession of Catholic faith and communicated at a Latin-rite Mass. The Jesuits stimulated the transit of Russians into the Latin rite. Tyszkiewicz enrolled paid secret informers among Russians to control the situation. He had many secret contacts with persons among the Orthodox intelligentsia and suggested making conversion to Catholicism a condition of any financial help. Many Russians angrily rejected the unbecoming proposals of Tyszkiewicz. Fr. Sergiy Bulgakov was disappointed in Catholicism after the meeting with Tyszkiewicz: the great universal idea of St. Peter’s ministry boiled down to mere proselytism. Tyszkiewicz was a Pole by origin and wrote many articles under the Russian pseudonym, Serge Bosforoff, where he called on Russians to convert to the Roman Catholic Church. He used the emigrants who received charitable help for his own purposes. He wrote a provocative «Open letter of the Thirty Russian Catholics to Orthodox Metropolitan Anastasiy Gribanovskiy», and used the names and signatures of those Russian people whom he had aided. This scandalous action compromised the idea of Catholicism among Russian intellectuals, who had sympathized with it earlier in the spirit of the philosopher, Vladimir Soloviev.

In 1922, Fr. Gleb Verhovskiy came to Istanbul at the direction of the Oriental Congregation. He set himself at variance with Tyszkiewicz owing to such improper methods of missionary activity and urged the conservation of Byzantine-rite status for all Russian proselytes. The Jesuits made Fr. Verhovskiy’s situation very moral uncomfortable, and obliged him to leave Istanbul.

The most scandalous action committed by Tyszkiewicz involved sending a group of Russian young people to study in France and Belgium with stipendiums from the Catholic Church. Tyszkiewicz came from a very aristocratic family, and normally tended to give excessive importance to other aristocrats. He appointed a former courtier and aristocrat, Nikolay Burdukov, as a curator of the group. All the Russian settlement in Istanbul was scandalized and moved to laughter by this appointment. Nikolay Burdukov was famous in high society as a sodomite with the telling alias «princess Mescherskaya.

I’m quoting this article excerpt on Opus Publicum for three reasons.

First, despite what the situation may be today, this debacle serves as an important illustration of just how poorly the Society of Jesus often handled its encounters with non-Catholic Eastern Christians, particularly the Orthodox. Rather than respect their traditional rites and spiritual patrimony, they frequently attempted to foist a particular brand of Latin Catholicism on their would-be proselytes, which did very little to win much sympathy toward unity with the Catholic Church. Compare this with the missionary efforts of Blessed Bishop Mykola Charnetsky and other Redemptorists working in Ukraine to bring the Orthodox back into the Catholic fold. Rather than attempt to equate “Latinism” with “Catholicism,” they adopted the form of the Byzantine Rite in use among the Russian Orthodox in the hopes of demonstrating that to be Catholic does not not mean sacrificing one’s authentic traditions.

Second, there was genuine interest among certain segments of late 19th/early 20th century Russian society for unity with Rome. After seeing how the Russian Orthodox Church had become little more than a handmaid of the Russian Imperial state, only Rome proved to be a truly independent ecclesiastical force working in the world; standing up to the onslaughts of liberalism; and refusing — at least until the 1960s — to forego the social rights of Christ the King in favor of a “safe compromise” with secular powers. Even Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, who eventually became a fierce critic of certain Latin Catholic doctrines, was interested in joining the Catholic Church after his exile by the Soviets, though clearly that never came to pass.

Last, there are far too many (traditional and some conservative) Latin Catholics today who seem to think that the Church should approach the Orthodox in a manner not dissimilar from the Jesuits recounted above. Given the suspicion in which many of the Orthodox now hold the Catholic Church, coupled with the Latin Church’s demolition of its liturgical patrimony, that’s never going to work. Yes, some individual Orthodox priests and laity do choose to unite themselves with Rome, but often only after wading through a great deal of nonsense. (Those fortunate enough to have access to a Greco-Catholic parish tend to have an easier time of it.) This is why true ecumenical dialogue — understood as a necessary step toward re-unification — is neither a waste of time nor a betrayal of the Catholic Faith. Before unity can become a reality, centuries of misunderstandings and political animosity have to be swept away. While Catholics — Latin or Greek — should continue to witness  to their estranged Orthodox brethren and never compromise the Faith, they should do so with patience and charity. In other words, don’t follow the historic lead of the Jesuits.

The Problem of Staying Orthodox – Postscript

Responses to my previous post, “The Problem of Staying Orthodox,” were far more positive than I anticipated, particularly on social media. That did not stop some people from accusing me of everything from racism to ignoring the problems in the Catholic Church, however. Others suggested that I was attempting to pitch Catholicism as a paradisiacal ecclesiastical unit that has somehow escaped the contradictions, compromises, and capitulations found in Orthodoxy. Nonsense. I am quite aware, for instance, how depressingly few Catholics follow the Church’s infallible teaching on contraception; and when it comes to the contemporary annulment process, it’s not noticeably different in practice from the Orthodox Church’s willingness to allow second and third marriages. Catholicism, by virtue of being at least four times larger than Orthodoxy, is beset by far more visible problems than the Orthodox Church. When a scandal breaks out in the Catholic Church, it’s featured in the New York Times; when an equally revolting scandal afflicts the Orthodox, it’s a shock when any major news outlet makes mention of it at all. The closest Orthodoxy comes to getting “bad press” in the West is when the Russian Church is accused of directing state policy on matters such as abortion, homosexuality, and domestic abuse. Perhaps this is why certain Orthodox, particularly those living in the West, are especially sensitive to criticism of their confession; they’re just not used to it. Catholics on the other hand have grown accustomed to priest sex-abuse jokes on late night television.

Among those Orthodox Christians who happened to agree with much of what I wrote, a few asked if I would have more to say on the topic of trying to persevere as an Orthodox Christian, particularly in the United States. Speaking as someone who opted not to remain Orthodox but rather return to the confessional haunt of his childhood (Greek Catholicism), I don’t feel fit to give advice. Still, I imagine that staying Orthodox can be just as challenging as staying Greek Catholic, albeit for very different reasons. Although both are minority churches forced to get by outside of their historic environments, the Orthodox are often able to define themselves by negation: “not Catholic”; “not Western”; “not rationalistic”; etc. Greek Catholics, though “not Western” in the limited sense that their liturgy, spirituality, and theology emerged in the geographic East, must strike a balancing act between being true to their authentic patrimony while not discarding certain irrevocable tenets of the Faith which their estranged Orthodox brethren need not worry about (e.g., Purgatory, Papal Primacy, and the Immaculate Conception). At the same time, Greek Catholics are often compelled to “compete” with their not-so-estranged Latin Catholic brethren who continue to their own liturgy, spirituality, and theology as normative for the Universal Church. Even today, more than 50 years after Orientalium ecclesiarium, Eastern Catholics in general, and Greek Catholics in particular, are largely thought of in terms of ritual differences rather than ecclesiastic integrity.

Comparatively, the Orthodox are free to steer clear of Latin Catholicism altogether under the guise of promoting “pure Orthodoxy.” The problem is that there is no such thing as “pure Orthodoxy,” especially at this stage in history. “Pure Orthodoxy” is often little more than ideologically charged Orthodoxy which lacks both a sense of history and a universal vision. In the hands of ex-Protestant converts, for example, “pure Orthodoxy” looks astonishingly like American Evangelicalism, only with less guitars and more icons. And for those who came to Orthodoxy out of cultural disaffection, spiritual confusion, or intellectual vapidity, “pure Orthodoxy” is frighteningly nationalistic, insular, and apocalyptic. Not everyone buys into “pure Orthodoxy,” of course. There are those who hold to Orthodoxy because it has the luxury of being both sacramental and (apparently) non-magisterial; messy doctrinal questions such as universalism can be bypassed with the claim that the issue has never been “dogmatically defined.” This form of Orthodoxy, not surprisingly, often comes accompanied with a strong antinomian streak.

These problems—and more—are worth exploring in depth, but probably not here. Nothing I have touched on so far gets into the fraught territory of how a number of women experience Orthodoxy and, in surprising numbers, feel alienated if not abused by its male-dominated, pseudo-monastic culture. Because Orthodoxy is often promoted as being “more masculine” than other forms of Christianity, it’s not surprising that women should find it so inhospitable. However, given that I am not a woman, I feel that I would be doing a disservice to this concern by trying to speculate too much. I have heard enough horror stories in my time to know that this concern is a very genuine one which the Orthodox Church would do well to confront head-on sooner rather than later.

With that said, I am going to close the book on this topic for now by repeating my hope for the emergence of what Fr. Robert Taft, S.J. has called “self-critical Orthodoxy.” This self-critical Orthodoxy must not be merely an academic exercise but rather an open and public discussion carried out in charity and truth. It will no doubt be painful, but that is what makes it so necessary.

The Problem of Staying Orthodox

Over at the old Opus Publicum site, I wrote a brief commentary on Steve Robinson’s Ancient Faith Radio podcast episode about his decision to stay in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Here’s what I had to say.

Steve Robinson, the great wit and honest soul behind the sadly defunct Pithless Thoughts web-log, returned to his Ancient Faith Radio podcast earlier this year. Robinson’s “re-debut” came accompanied with a moving, albeit general, account of where he had been spiritually for the past few years. His latest installment, “Staying Orthodox,” provides one of the best accounts I have ever encountered about why people convert to the Eastern Orthodox Church and how to stay there. Robinson’s reflection on these sensitive matters is open and non-polemical, which is as refreshing as it is rare. Many of Robinson’s thoughts can be applied to the experience of converts to Catholicism, particularly those who entered the Catholic Church during the comparatively steady reign of Pope Benedict XVI and now find themselves being thrown about in the sea of chaos which is the Pontificate of Francis. Some, however, are fairly limited to the unique challenges which attend to trying to be a first-best Orthodox Christian amidst a second-best reality.

Personally speaking, I cannot identify directly with Robinson’s book-based or intellectual conversion experience because for me, becoming Orthodox was more like switching teams between divisions after a prolonged period on the Disabled List rather than going from the American League to the National League (or even to another sport altogether). With that said, I quickly shared Robinson’s affinity for attempting to grasp the ways and means of Orthodoxy through thick theological tomes, collections of spiritual writings from ages past, and a scrupulous understanding of canons, customs, and cockamamie spiritual advice. Robinson, having seen much more of “on-the-ground” Orthodoxy than I ever did, fought the good fight to stay faithful to his conversion as long as he could before realizing that retreating away from the beauty and banality, greatness and grotesqueness, and surety and senselessness of the Orthodox Church was the only option he had left.

I’ll stop there. I don’t want to spoil Robinson’s account any further, and there is no way I can recreate the power of words which so clearly emanated from his heart. Although I share a different confessional commitment than Robinson, I can sympathize with what he has gone through and the great trials any man must undergo to follow their conscience amidst the confusion of the present age.

Despite frequent requests to do so, I have largely refrained from discussing publicly why I left the Eastern Orthodox Church in 2011 to rejoin Catholicism. My reasons for this are twofold. First, I have little-to-no interest whatsoever into turning my blog into a repository for Catholic/Orthodox polemics. Some years ago, when I opted to start writing critically on certain trends in the Orthodox Church, I found my combox flooded with angry rants, accusations, and all sorts of unedifying statements. Since then, people have either grown tired of fighting or, I hope, accepted the fact that my frank discussions of Orthodoxy are not intended to be triumphalistic. As I have maintained and still maintain, my love for the Eastern Orthodox Church runs deep; and though I cannot, in good conscience, profess adherence to Orthodoxy while it remains outside of communion with Rome, I do not wish ill on her or her followers. Like many Catholics, I hope and pray for the day when Catholics and Orthodox will come together, united by Christ in the Eucharist and professing the fullness of the Apostolic Faith.

Second, I don’t think my “conversion story” is all that interesting.

What is interesting, however, is reading and listening to others account for why they have decided to stay Orthodox despite the many difficulties they face in doing so. Orthodoxy, particularly in America, is often “sold” as a safe haven from the problems of (post)modernity; it also has the benefit of retaining a valid hierarchy and sacraments without the socio-cultural baggage associated with Catholicism. Liturgically speaking, Orthodoxy has a leg up on Catholicism and for those who don’t care for “pelvic matters,” its moral instruction is loose enough to allow for behaviors once condemned by all Christians, everywhere. On the flipside, American Orthodoxy is beset by poor oversight and leadership due to a limited resource pool for bishops; many of its priests lack the education and discipline to properly pastor a parish; a significant number of parishes, if not entire jurisdictions, remain ethnic ghettos or cultural centers; Orthodoxy’s “magisterium” extends no further than the church building’s front door; and the wave of conversions that have occurred since the 1990s has infected certain segments of American Orthodoxy with a Protestant mindset. Moreover, Orthodoxy, both in the United States and throughout the world, often lacks the capacity for self-criticism, resulting in alarming streaks of anti-intellectualism, chauvinism, and triumphalism.

While many who choose to remain Orthodox are cognizant of these realities, a noticeable number either are not or choose to ignore them. How long they can maintain this ignorance is an open question. For those who stay Orthodox with their eyes open, it seems that they have found a way to reconcile their faith with where they are at concretely. That is to say, instead of “escaping to Byzantium” or LARPing a Russian peasant from a Dostoevsky novel, they embrace Eastern Christianity within their decidedly Western context. Not content with pious myths about Orthodoxy’s “glorious past” or the belief that Greece or Russia represents a “Holy Mothership” where Orthodoxy flows free and pure, these Orthodox Christians recognize the contradictions, compromises, and capitulations found within their communion. In short, they know that the Orthodox Church is both a divine and all too human institution that must come to terms with its own past if it wishes to be anything more than a museum in the present.

At the same time, I suspect that more than a few Orthodox decide to remain where they are because the other options are less-than-appealing. For instance, I have conversed with several Orthodox Christians at length who have long considered uniting themselves with Rome only to be turned off by the ongoing and very public crisis which has gripped the Catholic Church for more than 50 years. While some were heartened by the liturgical decisions taken by Pope Benedict XVI, they view Francis’s pontificate with deep suspicion. Like many traditional Catholics, these Orthodox do not see Papa Frank as a beacon of humility, but rather an unhinged autocrat whose rhetorical excesses and meddling confirm their worst fears about the papacy. And though Orthodox converts to Catholicism are not, by the terms of canon law, Latin Catholics under the Church of Rome, the relative scarcity of Greek Catholic parishes in the West means that they will have to get by in a predominantly Latin environment. What this means is that outside of traditional or “reform of the reform” parishes, they will be exposed to banal (if not sacrilegious) liturgies, poor catechesis, and heterodoxy from pew to pulpit.

None of this is to say that I believe anyone should stay Orthodox; but I do understand and sympathize with many Orthodox Christians who believe they cannot “go Rome” at this time. One of the great failures of American Catholicism, starting in the 19th century, was its refusal to open its arms and embrace Eastern Christian emigres. Today, American Catholicism falters by refusing to reach out openly and honestly to the Orthodox while continuing to treat Eastern Catholics as second-class citizens. Although it’s impossible to know how many might leave Orthodoxy for Catholicism were conditions better, the sheer size and scope of the Catholic Church, coupled with her immense resources, would likely draw more than a few into her fold. In the meantime, for those committed to Orthodoxy, the road is rough and uncertain. What that means for American Orthodoxy’s demographic future remains to be seen.