Convert disease.
But the warning signs should be acknowledged none the less. My bride is Catholic, and has suddenly realized that many of the priests in our home diocese are no longer Nicean Christians (they deny the Incarnation).
When a priest, on Christmas, gets up and says that Jesus was not “a god” till maybe after the Resurrection, you have a problem. Such things don’t happen overnight though, and I had noticed this years ago.
I've never heard anything like that in a Catholic church, and I hope I never do. But it would justify contacting the bishop in a NY minute.
“When a priest, on Christmas, gets up and says that Jesus was not “a god” till maybe after the Resurrection, you have a problem. Such things don’t happen overnight though, and I had noticed this years ago.”
I’ve never seen anything even hinting at this sort of heresy in the Orthodox Church. You want to remember that in Orthodoxy, the People, the Laity, are the guardians of Orthodoxy. A priest or a hierarch starts preaching heresy and the People of God rise up and solve the problem. I’ve seen it myself. There is a danger with some converts, especially early in their life as Orthodox. Many of them, it seems especially the ones who go on to become priests in some jurisdictions, can be described as suffering from a sort of spiritual PTSD. They can be dangerous. Recently there was a big dust up about an OCA convert priest at base supporting the gay lifestyle, including gay marriage. When the complaints started, the OCA top metropolitan, another convert, seemed to support the priest. Both were condemned across the Orthodox world. In another instance, another convert priest, from Episcopalianism I think, announced that it was his job and purpose to “demystify” Orthodoxy. He got slapped down hard by the People across his jurisdiction.
We know, inherently, what is Orthodox and what is not by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We know when a dogma is true when we live it out in our lives individually and collectively. We react to the World in an Orthodox way. You may have seen flashes of that here on FR. But none of it is as a result of “Magical Thinking”. It is the result of 2000 years of living Orthodoxy.
Convert disease.
Convert disease? Interesting phrase which I have not previously heard, but from your post it seems to refer to a concept I come across quite often in the Catholic Church. Cradle believers very often see converts as being somehow less tuned into the proper way of thinking. I have never found this to be so personally. Though I did work for a time with a born and raised Italian Catholic woman who once told me that we, meaning Catholics, definitely do not believe that Jesus is God. She seemed pretty tuned in for certain. It has always struck me as a rather comforting thought that cradle believers are somehow a little better than those who have often given up so much in the world to be in the Church, but it must be short lived. After all, at some point it is likely to occur to people that the apostles were all converts.