“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.
After just rereading “Eleni,” I was again amazed at the Orthodox priests who fled the field and left the women to the Nazis, Italians, Greek communists and the Soviets. Not a pretty tale. I’ll stay with the Romans, lol. Not that they’re perfect either!