Somewhere in the world a Synod is taking place which has captured an uncomfortable amount of attention from the secular media. Since I promised not to comment on this Synod, I won’t. I will, however, express my extreme disappointment that this “event” is overshadowing the horror which is still unfolding for Christians in the Middle East. The Islamic State hasn’t called a ceasefire simply because a bunch old prelates in Rome are squabbling over how to circumvent settled dogma with specious reasoning. Some are still fretting that the Synod will lead to a rupture in the Catholic Church, maybe even a full-on schism. Would that be so bad? Yes, schism is always a tragedy, but it’s not without certain upsides. The departure of the Old Catholics in the 19th C., for instance, wounded the Church, but not deeply. Look at where the Old Catholics are today. But the Old Catholics were always an extreme minority; it’s not clear at this point who will go where and what their numbers shall be. That’s because it’s not clear yet who the Synod will shake out. Maybe, as some have predicted, it will just weaken the Church more, make her look even more unnecessary and foolish in the eyes of others, and limp onward toward further occasions for self-destruction in the name of “renewal.” Thankfully Catholic Answers and other neo-Catholic apologists will be on hand to explain it all away.

Some years ago an online acquaintance of mine suggested that one of the attractions of Roman Catholicism for converts is that it provided something like “philosophical certainty” in a radically uncertain world. In short, if you can’t handle the soft nihilism of mass consumer culture or the more full-throated nihilism embedded in any number of mainline academic disciplines, then the Church is the place for you. I was Orthodox at the time he pitched this idea to me, but even then I thought he was probably onto something. I don’t think Eastern Orthodoxy enjoys such an “exalted” status. Without trying to pass over all of the genuinely good things Orthodoxy provides to those who enter her doorway, I think it’s safe to say that “philosophical certainty” isn’t one of them. In many respects, Orthodoxy, whether it intends to or not, merely reaffirms the popular fideism which runs through large currents of conservative American Christianity. The suspicion of reason which, if pressed far enough, becomes the denigration of thought, plays nicely into certain myths about what an “authentic Christianity” ought to look like. For more “sophisticated” types, intoxicated with the ways and means of postmodern thought and positively indignant toward the idea that unaided human reason can tell us much of anything, the “mysticism” of Orthodoxy provides something resembling stability. In other words, it makes one’s religious solipsism look grounded.