Should I stay, or should I go?
by Bernard Brandt
Gabriel Sanchez, whose estimable weblog Opus Publicum, I have long read and admired, has outdone himself this time, with his most recent posting, Heaven Forbid. I heartily recommend that you read his words, as any attempt on my part to offer a precis of them would fail adequately to express either their prudence or their charity.
His words, however, have inspired a few of my own, which I made as a comment on his entry. I offer them to the six or seven readers of this weblog, for what they are worth. Probably, quite little:
I have long stopped caring regarding which side of the Great Divide my friends and others choose. I have long thought that both sides, Orthodox and Catholic, inhere at the center of Christ’s Church. The besetting problems of both sides are that, on one, it is the right faith given to the wrong people; on the other, it is the right faith taught by the wrong clergy.
That said, I have been in the middle, largely hated by both sides. For almost thirty years, I have been looked down upon by the East as a dirty little uniate. And, the full spectrum of the West, from Trad to Mod, has generally and often quite vocally looked down upon me as not quite ‘theirs’. Sigh.
I have found most of the liturgies from the full spectrum of the West to be unremittingly ill informed and bleak, with the exception of a handful, which include the Vatican (under Benedict) and a little Dominican parish in Seattle, Washington. On the other hand, I am at home at most Orthodox parishes, and have standing offers from five choirs to join them, should I ‘come to my senses’. It would take me a month or two to become comfortable in a Slavic speaking church, and perhaps a year or two for a Greek speaking church.
But I can’t yet bring myself to stand before an Orthodox priest and say, before God and everybody, that I renounce the teachings of the Pope of Rome. On the whole, I think they have been rather good. I also happen to think that if we are going to be following all the canons of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, we should include the one about giving Rome the primacy of honor. Or the one saying that there should be only one bishop to a city. Just sayin’…
And finally, I was baptized and confirmed as a Roman Catholic. Although I feel that the West has abandoned me, or at least, anything beautiful or true or wise in the Faith, I still am its abandoned child. I am fortunate to be at an Eastern Catholic Church that has all of those things. I suppose that if I were forced to leave it, or if I found that the West had well and truly lost the Faith (as some of the darker sayings attributed to our Blessed Lady have put it), then I would have to march to the other side. But not now. Not yet.
Random Conjectures 
I couldn’t stay, nor could I go.
Don’t really have the energy for a conversion.
Nor do I have any energy for the daft.
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Why do you think that is snide?
I am not calling you daft. I’m talking about pathetic R.C. sermons.
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My apologies, August. I misunderstood what you had to say. If what you are referring to are most RC priestly sermons, then I quite agree with you. I have erased the offending language.
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One of the paradoxes of Homo Liturgicus in the West (all but extinct) is that he spends his life learning about & raging against Rome’s departure from authentic Tradition… and his solution? To abandon his native liturgy altogether for Byzantium or Antioch. I understand this of course, but it doesn’t help the cause. I am convinced that a lay-movement is the only possible way to restore not just an outward practice of the Latin tradition, but its spirit – and how can this happen if we all pack our bags?
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Timothy, I would suggest that it be reasonable to examine the context in which I lived. I returned to the RC church after a number of years, at the beginning of the pontificate of the then JPII. I also lived under the jurisdiction of His Eminence, Roger Cardinal Mahony. I tried to make a go of it, for nearly ten years. I even attempted to enter the priesthood, and experienced up close and personal what has been related in the book, ‘Goodbye, Good Men’. I needed to be spiritually fed, and the only place where I could find such spiritual food was at my parish of St. Andrew in El Segundo. I left a part of the Church where Holy Tradition was no longer being taught for one which was.
It was only much later, with the pontificate of His Holiness, Benedict XVI, that the beginnings of the return to Tradition occurred in the West. By then, I had long ago given up the fight for the West. And, as it now appears, Benedict’s pontificate looks to be a false spring. Business as usual has returned to the RC Church. You are welcome to it. I’ve had quite enough, myself.
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Bernard: I think this was an entirely reasonable course to take & I would do the same if I had the same set of options in front of me. I am bewailing our lot, I suppose, rather than jabbing my finger at similar people who have said enough is enough. If certain alleviating factors disappeared in my own current circumstances I would be very tempted to join the path of J.D.
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I’ve struggled with this dilemma for years and have come to the conclusion that I am probably going to enter the Orthodox Church, although with a lot of love for much of the western patrimony such as western sacramentals and the pre Vatican II theology behind them; the Benedictine Office; Gregorian Chant and the Rosary.
It’s hard because this isn’t a knee jerk reaction on my part, and because I don’t hate Roman Catholics or the Roman Catholic Church,I’m just finding that I cannot in good faith deal with the cognitive dissonance of trying to singlehandedly uphold and defend a version of the Faith that quite frankly has been utterly abandoned by the hierarchy and demolished under the aegis of the papacy itself, the supposed ” rock” of the Faith. I feel a bit like Hieromonk Gabriel Bunge in his long, slow and probably agonizing no soul searching path to Orthodoxy.
I do not feel like I believe in the papacy as it has come to be, nor do I feel like I owe allegiance to the men who have deconstructed the Latin Church. I also feel like I cannot in good faith take the path ofthe SSPX or the sedevacantists. In fact there’s a fairly good book out there recently written attempting to refute sedevacantism which points to Orthodoxy. It’s mostly attacking the Dimond Brothers and the Orthodox stuff is pretty sparse but it’s pretty convincing to me at least, although this book isn’t the sole reason I’m leaving Rome. It’s worth checking out.
Would I feel this way if I had what you have, an Eastern Catholic parish with a robust liturgical life? I’m not sure, but I imagine at some point the shenanigans in Rome would get to me, and I’d wonder why we must keep paying lip service to the Pope and the Vatican when I can see little evidence they have done much of anything in the last 100 plus years but be a mixed bag of mostly destructive tendencies.
Don’t get me wrong I say this with a heavy heart, but I’m at home praying and thinking in an Eastern way, and I’ve got no love for the Papacy as its come to be.
My prayers for you Mr. Brandt, and your readers, some of whom probably find themselves in my shoes.
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And my prayers are likewise for you, J.D. Thank you for your kind comment. And please believe that I am engaging in no Clintonesque hypocrisy in saying, I feel your pain. I do not know what I would have done had not St. Andrew’s been there for me. May God guide you to the best path for you.
In the mean time, I have taken the liberty of looking at your weblog. Fine work there. Do please continue with it.
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Regret is a fool’s game. Look at me! I am going to be received into the Orthodox Church soon and I won’t ever look back. As for all the stuff I leave behind, what of it? The only stuff I would consider even remotely liturgical is confined to old, musty libraries and who but a few cranks like me would be interested in that?
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