I give up
Posted by Brian August 08, 2005
I don’t think I’ll ever finish the post I mentioned before about where I went to church the Sunday before last.
Instead, I think I’ll just say that I sometimes wish I could join an Orthodox Church (I can’t, because I’m not really welcome) for at least two reasons:
- I love their liturgy - the way they worship.
- I suspect that I would feel more comfortable with their atonement theology than I do with most Western atonement theories. Maybe I’ll write more about this later, but for now, I’ll just say that the second half of this article has some interesting things to say about that topic.
On the other hand, sometimes I don’t wish I could be Orthodox.
As I was talking with the priest after the liturgy, he mentioned that he had previously met one of our (St. Michael’s) female clergy somewhere. In an effort to discover which person he meant, I asked, “deacon or priest”? He responded, “priest” - then, after a moment’s hesitation, added, “-ess”.
Nice.
I would like for the RCC to recall some of its richer liturgy which resembles the Orthodox liturgy. The trouble with it is that since much of the style of the liturgy is culturally based, American Catholics get an American style: a really lame, plain liturgy devoid of interest.
I doubt the priest was trying to be insulting, by the way. But of course I wasn’t there.
Rememebr that time we went to the Greek Festival (mmm, pitas. . . .) and we went into the church building, and they had a chart that asked, “Who Started Your Church?” and I was all upset because they had the CoC’s being started by Massa Campbell. I can’t remember where they said the Catholic Church came from, but I have the impression they understand the Catholic Church to have broken off from them . . . instead of vice versa . . . but we shan’t get into the Great Schism here.