"I am the door. By me if any man enter in he shall be saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture." - John 10:9 At every parish where I have had the pleasure of attending services, there is always a small group of people who find their way all the way up to the church building but don't actually attend services. At one parish it was a group of male gypsies who talked on cellphones or smoked cigarettes. At another it was a few Protestant husbands who, though they never attended services, opened the parish doors for people as they filed in. At yet another parish the men stood in the narthex and chatted until it was time to receive and then got in line. Latin or Greek Catholic, Eastern or Oriental Orthodox I see the same small throng of men standing next to the front door, but not standing, sitting, or kneeling amongst the people. If it were me (and I can only speak for myself here) this option would be an unsavory one. The boredom would be immediate. The anxiety of som...
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ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veR4kioP920
At 34:00 he walked off the edge. Time to draft a new guy who can't speak in complete sentences and doesn't seem to know what the church believes. Must be single and arrange to be unanimously elected. Shouldn't take long.
ReplyDeleteCan't you lay off the sarcasm at least for Holy Week?
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ReplyDeleteI went to 34:00 just to see what Bob was referring to - I guess the "edge" is the (optimistic?) assertion that this church (shrine?) in NYC will be open by the end of the year?
ReplyDeleteWhat I found more germaine to Orthodoxy in general was the next question around mixed marriages, sacraments, and the Eucharist. Behind this problem is Orthodoxy's general struggle in 'being' the Church in a mixed religious and secular culture. This Church of the East IS a creation of a homogeneous religious culture and government, and this was even true to a great extant when if found itself as a minority subculture (such as under Ottoman rule). I don't agree with the Archbishops solution, but the problem is very real and worth addressing in a forthright manner which he does.