Kolokotronis, I grew up with Orthodox relatives and we never talked about this. The Church was not to judge, not to serve as a policeman, but to be a loving guide.
The whole Serbian Kosovo love-affair is based on the Orthodox mindset of the Serbs: when faced with the choice to either bow to the Sultan and embrace Islam, or to choose Heavenly Kingdom, Serbian Prince Lazar and his knights chose the Kingdom of God because, as he said the earthly kingdoms are temporary and that of God is ever lasting.
When in march of this year, Kosovo Albanians torched Serb houses, the inhabitants left everything behind but took the icons and the candillas; nothing else mattered to them.
The Church that prosecutes women because of their period is alien to me. Tolstoy's famous story "The Three Hermits" is what Orthodoxy of my youth is, although it was written in the late 1800's. So, when you tell me that you knew about medieval Russian Church's puritanical ways, this is news to me because we have no moral leg to stand on and criticize Catholics and Protestants for similar transgressions.
My point was that sometimes Orthodoxy is portrayed as holier than Grail. Orthodoxy keeps theology unchanged, but the rest is a different story.
The Church should teach us what Jesus taught. It should stay out of people's bedrooms. Birth control is birth control no matter what method is used. If that is immoral, then preventive medicine is immoral too.
Again that's not the way I heard it. It was some elaboration of the transubstantiation thing, that if you bled you somehow lost Christ by bleeding. It held the same if you had recently had oral surgery, for instance.
We briefly attended the local ROCOR church and the priest had come from Etna and he handed out one of their booklets, which explained it like this.
There was something about men too.
It's ridiculous because if you take it far enough, well, never mind. Just suffice to say there was some belief that one could lose the Body and Blood of Christ in a body fluid. Etna is bizarre, if you ask me. But it was not just about women, as I was told this stuff.
Right. Good point. The same priest from Etna let his son work through pneumonia because God was more powerful than a physician. The poor kid coughed almost nonstop for a few weeks at liturgy. And I work in the field and I can tell you that was not bronchitis.