This is post 175:
Apropos of our conversation dealing with the Orthodox Churches' teaching on Mary's perpetual virginity, have you noticed how quiet they've been about this? One would think that, given the historic Orthodox affirmation of this doctrine, some of the more, shall we say, "persistent" and "vocal" Orthodox folk on this message board, who always show such alacrity in posting their comments when the Catholic Church is the issue, would have added their voices to defend Holy Tradition, now that Orthodoxy has recently entered the picture in your and my comments. Fascinating.
And I don't see any "demands" at all.
When I joined FR, I joined on the "political" side. I never posted to the religious threads but saw them as they at that time, were mixed in with politics. The threads scared me because of all the fighting "in the name of God." The first night I posted something to do with religion was in defense of the Blessed Virgin Mary (who was being excoriated by some Protestants) and the poster who was with me who had also jumped in that night for the first time was Wordsmith - who is a wonderful Orthodox man. We became friends and united because of our love of the Theotokos. We civilly exchanged posts "off" line, talked about Catholicism and Orthodoxy and he invited me to attend an Orthodox Mass with him. He recommended several books to me which I purchased and have read.
And ya know, Patrick Madrid has run a forum similar to FR for a long time and he's probably lurked on FR for a long time before something interested him enough that he decided to join - like most of us. He has published a religious magazine for some years and he is the author of many books. Why would he come to FR in a timid manner? I've found his posts to be polite, to the point and he has not slandered or personally insulted anyone.