Priests Who Hold Back

In my article Just One More Step, I addressed the phenomenon of people who have given up a great deal in order to convert to Orthodoxy, but who refuse to follow their conscience and become a part of Genuine/True Orthodoxy because of social stigmas, isolation, or other practical concerns. Far from being the concern solely of laypeople, I have personally seen the example of priests who also realize the truth, but cannot commit to it, for various non-theological reasons. I will illustrate just one example here.

There is a priest whom I have known since 1998, who is a convert to New Calendar Orthodoxy from Protestantism and who was caught up in the fervor of the 1987 crop of 2000 Evangelicals who embraced New Calendar Orthodoxy via the Antiochian Patriarchate. Soon after his conversion, he learned of the Old Calendarists/Genuine Orthodox, joined them, became burned out, and returned to the New Calendar Church, which he has served faithfully from that time.

This priest had often made cracks against Traditionalists, especially against the rasso and the skoufos (i.e., traditional Orthodox priestly attire), which he claimed would be a barrier to ever converting “Billy Bob to Orthodoxy.” During one meeting, I went on to disabuse him of this notion, explaining that I had successfully baptized several Protestants in Eastern North Carolina while maintaining a rasso and skoufos, but he seemed to just file the information away and continue on with his bias. Another time, this priest remarked that American Orthodoxy was not about English liturgies, but going further and having hamburgers and hot dogs at potluck, not falafel. I wondered why we could not have both? There seemed to be a strong identify crisis going on.

Delving deeper, and prodding more than I usually do, I got this priest to admit that he knew that the Old Calendarists were right—but he admitted that he simply could not handle all the fasting and other requirements. He quickly followed up by saying that now he could, some 20 years later, but he is not sure that he would want to. This was during the time of the Antiochian bishops’ crisis, where Metropolitan Philip “demoted” his ruling bishops to auxiliaries, and he remarked that he threw most correspondence from the Archdiocese in the trash. It didn’t affect his parish, he reasoned, so it didn’t matter. Still, he said, if they forced him to take sides, then he would reconsider returning to the Old Calendarists.

This conversation was truly one of the more bizarre ones which I had during my five year tenure as a priest (2008-2013). I had met a friend of this priest’s, and remarked that said friend sent his greetings. The priest in question admitted that he could not talk to his friend anymore, because it bothered him to see that that fellow had returned to the Old Calendar and stayed there, and he could not handle the debates. Keep in mind that I was only about 30 years old at this time, and talking with someone in his 50s, an elder in the generational sense, and yet I could not shake my feelings that this was really all a series of excuses.

This individual continues on as a priest, while I have subsequently failed in my ministry and personal life and resigned. Perhaps this weighs in to his thought process, and he considers that I am proof that joining the Old Calendar Church is a recipe for personal instability. Such could not be further from the truth, and such thoughts are clearly temptations. I pray fervently for this priest, that he will someday realize that he more than anyone else is called to give everything to be part of the truth. Let him and us not come so close to the edge, and not jump over it and immerse ourselves in the depth of the fullness of Orthodoxy, because we are afraid of personal concerns.

 

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