"The Orthodox in this country seem to facing many of the same hurdles Catholics faced 100 years ago. Then, Roman Catholicism transformed from a largely immigrant church to a mainstream church as the immigrants who formed its backbone blended into American culture."
There is one huge difference, and that difference enormously strengthened the Catholic Church. 100 years ago, anti-Catholic sentiment was bitter and aggressive. That was the pinnacle era of "Birth of a Nation" Ku Klux Klan ideology. The public schools in many states taught religion, and intentionally and aggressively taught an anti-Catholic bias, requiring children to participate in explicitly Protestant prayers, etc. It was because of this malicious persecution that the Catholic Church in America responded by declaring the Catholic School system, that each diocese and parish should create its own schools.
The Catholic-haters in several states responded by passing laws making private religious education ILLEGAL, and REQUIRING students to attend the public schools.
The Supreme Court struck down those laws.
Anyway, the point is that the all of that nastiness and malevolence actually HELPED the Catholic Church, because by singling out Catholics for special, negative treatment, the backlash was that Catholics made a universal school system for Catholics, something that does not really exist to that degree and depth in other countries. Because the Catholics were quite numerous already, and made up of a bunch of Irish, Poles, Germans and Italians - not people who are characteristically meek or retiring, but who are stubborn as hell - when the Protestant establishment attempted to use the law to act out its anti-Catholic bias, the result was a degree of mobilization and militancy in the Roman Catholic Church that would have never been achieved without the persecution.
That turned out to be an advantage to Catholicism, because it gave Catholics battle scars and made them stick together to stick in in their opponents' eye.
By contrast, nobody is persecuting the Orthodox. In truth, before recently, about the only people who knew what Orthodoxy was were either living in a few ethnic neighborhoods in a couple of immigration cities, or Catholics who had been through Catholic School and had Church history. Orthodoxy is a "below the radar screen" sort of thing. One can sometimes still see idiots cook off somewhere and put up a billboard like the clowns who put up a "Nazi Pope" sign out in Washington a couple of years ago. There's still some residual anti-Catholic bile out there in the fever swamps. (We even see some of it here on the FR religion pages sometimes.)
But it's just not imaginable that anybody is going to put up a billboard of the Ecumenical Patriarch or start fulminating on air somewhere about how Onion Domes and icons are all concealment for the Whore of Babylon.
So, unfortunately for the Orthodox, they don't have the luxury of having the same really mean and really stupid enemies that the Catholics faced 100 years ago to unite them. Who hates the Orthodox? Anybody likely to realize that you, too, are the "Whore of Babylon" that needs to be hated and feared is too ignorant to know you exist in the first place. Sad but true.
And so you face different hurdles.
The first is the LACK of a really unifying enemy, which Catholics had the luxury of having.
And the second is division among yourselves which is one thing that Catholics lack.
LOL! Not exactly the wording that I'd have used but the meaning is right on target.
And the second is division among yourselves which is one thing that Catholics lack.
Actually, the "divisions" that you speak of are not so concrete when viewed from the inside. I can go to virtually any Greek, Russian, Serbian, OCA (etc.) Church, receive Communion, and be welcomed. Our divisions are much closer to your own divisions, using examples such as the Maronites (sp?) or the Byzantine Catholics, than you realize. True, we don't have a single human head of the Church as you do, so you were correct if that's what you meant.
Actually, I'm an Anglican. I have several OCA friends and am fairly familiar with their problems. True, Orthodox didn't face the same type of unifying persecution in this country that Catholics faced. The large influx of Orthodox came after the heydey of the kkk types; and then they tended to be welcomed as political refugees from communism. Besides, the drooling specimen of white trash wrapped in a bedsheet wouldn't be intelligent enough to distinguish between Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox anyway.
Orthodox are still seen as "under the radar" by many because of their lack of organizational unity. Most of them are in full Communion with each other, recognize each other's clergy, and particiapte in joint mission projects (such as the Orthodox Christian Mission Center in St Augustine.) Taken as a whole, there are more Orthodox Christians in this country than Anglican/Episcopalians or Presbyterians.
The only persecution that Orthodx will likely face will be the same persecution that traditional Catholics and Evangelical Protestants will face. That will come from those three groups' opposition to abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, the "MTV" culture, etc.