Many disaffected Catholics became Orthodox in the really bad times after VII, but a number have returned. The Orthodox deal with the whole problem by never discussing morality at all, and you can just coast along with their beautiful liturgy without being troubled by anything else. I attended an Orthofox church for a while, and about half the congregation was gay. They also had a huge gay scandal a few years ago that involved not only a couple of bishops, but a Metroploitan. It was a scandal only because there had been some financial hanky pinky as well, btw.
I guess converts feel that the Orthodox are at least not hypocrites, since they never talk about morality - particularly sexual morality - in the first place!
Your comment is either rank idiocy or slander. I am not sure which so I will assume the former out of charity. I have been in a lot of Orthodox parishes, and some put more emphasis on certain subjects than others. But I have NEVER been in one that dodged moral issues. Perhaps you are confusing us with the Episcopalians.
“Many disaffected Catholics became Orthodox in the really bad times after VII, but a number have returned.”
I expect you are correct. Many Roman Catholics seem to regret their choice to come into Orthodoxy. Like Dreher notes in his Washington Post article:
“Don’t be mislead. Orthodoxy, at its core, is not about rules and practices. The more I progress in my Orthodoxy, the clearer it is to me that Orthodoxy is, above all, a way. It is not an institution, a set of doctrines or a collection of rituals, though it contains all three. It is rather a way of seeing the world, and one’s place in it, and a path to holiness which is paradoxically both ancient and astonishingly fresh, at least to Western sensibilities. It is a way of liberation.”
Orthodoxy is not even remotely Roman Catholicism. In fact my wife, many years ago, was asked by the abbess of the monastery outside my maternal village in Greece “What is the difference between The Church in the West and The Church in the East?” She replied, “Oh, Mother, that’s easy! In the West The Church says “Do this or you will go to hell!” In the East The Church says “Do this and you will become like God!”
Many Latins come to Orthodoxy expecting to find the pre-Vatican II Church, on steroids and with a Greek accent. They are very often disappointed.
And livius, we strive to die to the self precisely because we fully appreciate our fallen and sinful nature and know that we can only fulfill our created purpose to be “like God” if we die to our sinful selves. That’s not easy but it is what we believe we must do as a community.