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As Daniel can attest, I urged him to talk with his Byzantine Spiritual Father and especially the monastics at Holy Resurrection Monastery. I have told him before to be the best Byzantine Catholic he can be. He can attest that we disagree about many things But he is a good young man and I just hope that a good Spiritual Father leads him in a balanced way.
I admire his idealism and i do believe that this idealism can be exercised in the Byz Cath Church or in Orthodoxy (mainstream that is!!!)

Guilty, as charged!

AmdG

Slava Isusu Christu!

Why of course, dear Alex!

Byzantine Silliness.

Yeah, that's the ticket

Daniel,

I can't believe what has happened to you. Only two months ago you emailed me, expressing your desire to visit our seminary here in Pittsburgh. I was really looking forward to meeting you in person for the first time. I remember the great the joy that you shared with us when you were baptized and chrismated as a Byzantine Catholic last year. Do you really, deep down in your heart, believe that it was graceless?

The Holy Spirt was at work in your life then, Daniel. To deny that fact, and to claim that it was all a graceless sham, is to really deny the truth. You already have been baptized, and received the Holy Spirit. To subject yourself to a second baptism is to deny the work that the Holy Spirit has been carrying out in your life, and the life of your mother.

Please prayerfully consider this. Forget about long beards and dusty old canons, and think about what God has already done in your life.

With deep sadness,
Anthony

Dear Anthony,

How do they ever shampoo those long beards anyway?

(You have to forgive me for all my posts here today. I'm a little like the husband who has been away from his wife for too long - just needs to catch up on things . . .)

Alex

A response for Alex - one shampoos one's beard (of whatever length) with - surprise! - shampoo.
Two questions for Daniel:
1) what is a melkite kitchen?
2) what is an Orthodox Boot Camp (for that matter, what is an Orthodox Boot and why would it go to camp)?
Incognitus

Dear Incognitus,

I know WHAT one shampoos one's beard with (although in your case you just might use a "NO NAME" product ).

But HOW do you do it? When you take a shower and just let the lather flow down your tummy?

Sounds rather sensuous to me . . .

alex

Alex, you are confusing the heck out of Daniel :p (is 'heck' profanity?). He probably has never heard the term "Orthodox in communion with Rome". He's only been Byzantine Catholic for a year! It sounds to me like the 'Morthodox' bug bit him a little too hard and he completely skipped the "Orthodox in communion with Rome" chapter.

Daniel, most converts to Byzantine Catholicism go through a stage where they are "more orthodox than the Orthodox" (hence the comment about the long beard, etc.). Some end up becoming Orthodox, some eventually settle into the "Orthodox in communion with Rome" philosophy of maintaining Orthodox traditions without giving up the Roman see, and others get Latinized to some degree or another. Usually those who leave are doing so out of reaction to those who are Latinized. I hope you are leaving to follow your heart, not to run away from the Latin Rite.

Tammy

Daniel,

You were baptised and chrismated BC and now you will be baptised by the Antiochians? Does your bishop know this? The Antiochians have a clear policy against this. If you were baptised by some sort of wierd semi-Christian group I can understand baptism but from Byzantine Catholic???

anastasios

Dear: Mikey,

No I will never ever go to the ROAC, I flat out refuse that. I know some of there history that there Inquiers usally dont here about. Also dont call me "sir" people who dont work for a living are called sir! LOL

Dear: Anthony,

Yes that was the case then. Although things do change as brian can tell you. I was only Chrismated into the Byzantine Catholic Church I was never baptized. Do I truley in my heart believe that my Chrismation and my Heretical Protestant baptism were graceless? With all my 100% of my heart. I have always been told to look to the Church fathers, so I did. I picked up and dusted off some of the Orthodox canons which you speak of and read that Heretic "Mysteries" are worthless, and I do believe them, am I just supposed to say well "were not in the 8th century" and disregard what they say!? I think not.

Dear: Brian,

No I will not start "Jurisdiction Jumping" if there is a Serbian, ROCOR, or JP parish near me to where I will live in june (Oceanside, CA) then I will attend one of thouse.

Dear: Icognitus,

1. The "Melkite Kitchen" like a regular kitchen at the melkite catholic church, where they serve food to the poor every thursday.

2. Not Orthodox boot camp. I am going to Marine Corps boot camp in june, You proabley just scrambled the words up,lol.

Dear: Anastasios,

I was baptized in a protestant church. I have no baptismal certificate for my Protestant baptism. They recieve all who were baptized protestant with no baptismal certificate by the Holy Mysteries of Initation.

In Christ
Daniel

Blessed Ambrose of Milkovo, Pray for me in these troubled times!

Christ is in our midst!

Brothers and sisters. I know Daniel to be a true friend of all of us here at the forum. He is making decisons that will affect him for the rest of his life, both as a marine and as a Christian. I myself do not understand all the things he is being told. I did not know all the things being said about the various Orthodox jurisdictions, ie Antioch versus EP etc. For myself I simply know that I am Antiochian and love my Metropolitan and my Patriarch very much. We also have a wonderful relationship with the OCA parish near us. Gee I guess its simple to be ignorant. I will continue to support daniel because I love him as a brother. He may not be right, but geepers maybe I'm not either.

Michael

You too, Michael?

DJS,

this is not some Orthodox conspiracy you know!!! or would that be Celtic Orthodox conspiracy???

What our friend Daniel is going through now, is a very common phenomemnon of former Protestants who convert to Apostolic Christianity.

I myself know people of American background who were former members of the ROCOR or Old Calendarist and now worship with the Society of St. Pius X and have gone to three bapsitms or something like that.

Sometimes the expectations of the people toward the Churches are too high. The Church is divinely instituted but it's directed by men who have errors and mistakes and problems, and that is sometimes hard to understand.

At the beggining is all perfect but then when people research the canons, liturgical history, etc. they find out it's not enough holy and ancient as they thought so they look for something else and sooner or later that "smt else" will no longer be enough either. The jurisdictional mess and antipathy between Orthodox jurisdictions does not help people to have a healthy conversion.

The sad thing is that now you cannot be sure about anything, there's liberalism everywhere and the devil will also try to destroy the Eastern Church as he attacked the Western Church. But jumping from the boat when things go wrong will not help at all.

Glory to Jesus Christ!
(or Christ is baptized in the Jordan....
whatever you prefer.)

Dear Daniel and others,

I have been very interested in this thread, since what Daniel has been going through has been a great temptation for me as well. I understand where he is coming from personally, and I don't judge him for any decisions he is making. The only difference is that I have had such a broad experience in Roman Catholicism and a relatively broad experience in Orhodoxy this past year that I have decided not to break communion with Rome. I should attribute this also to my spiritual father, who snaps me out of my "Morthodox daydreams" that often turn into interior nightmares.

If one has been Latin or unreligious for most of one's life, one can be easily swept away with the "hyper-Orthodox" liturgies of the ROCOR, Jerusalem Patriarchate, or other jurisdictions. One can also be prone to eat whole the harsh rhetoric of the (usually convert) Orthodox concerning the "Western heretics" and their "deviations" from Orthodox practice. (I always thought it very ironic that some former Evangelical who opposed the veneration of the Theotokos so few years ago could oppose the Marian piety of a Latin Mexican grandmother as being deviant or heterodox. The nerve!) If one goes to their ceremonies too much, or reads too much of their literature, one is an easy victim to the "super-correctness" disease, the deification of the Typikon, and the notion that holiness is based on doing things rather than BECOMING A PERSON in the fullest sense of the word. Even such a radically anti-ecumenical figure as Father Seraphim Rose saw the dangers of this in his own converts, and sought to develop an "Orthodoxy of the heart." One can be Orthodox without being a true Christian, and that is the most tragic thing of all.
I have been an easy victim of this disease. Due to my past as a Latin traditionalist, I am very eager to become a fanatic however I can. But this is my form of idolatry, and I have to overcome it. In this sense, thank God for those Greek Orthodox Christians. At some points, they could a flying fermented loaf about the Typikon. (They kneel on Sundays, have services for the Dead right after Sunday Liturgy, and... horror of horrors... some even have organs!!!!) But is this really that bad? Does this mean that they are going to Hell? Since when did "doing the right thing" become a price we pay for our salvation, rather than the healing balm that God applies to our souls to restore His image and likeness in us?
Since when did God give prizes for those who are meanest to the heterodox, so that they won't get their hands dirty with heretics? Truth be told, I now feel more comfortable in a Greek Church than a super-correct Orthodox Church. (Not that I stop attending the latter, though.) And if this super-correctness does not apply among the Orthodox, what makes us, Eastern Christians in communion with Rome, any different? I really don't see the big deal here. If the MP and the EP have their arguments and mini-schisms, what is excluding us from the ledger of Eastern Orthodoxy written in Heaven (which in the end, is the only one that really matters).

There is an old counsel in spiritual life: never make a drastic spiritual change in the time of crisis. Something tells me that poor Daniel has fallen into such an error. Fortuneately, he seems to have a good spiritual father, and we should not fear too much. But the grass is NEVER greener on the other side of the fence, and the worst problem is that, wherever we go, we always take ourselves with us, and that is a burden we will have all of our lives.

Just the two cents of a struggling sinner.

God bless,
Arturo