Our Friend, Hillary, fellow Evil Trad (The Devout Life, see the sidebar) and accomplished writer for Life Site News, has challenged me to make The New Crusade something more than a news aggregator. I'm going to try. There will still be lots of news links, but I promise to try to post an original post at least once a week. This is the first.
How I Got To Be An Evil Trad (Part I)
As many of you know, I am a convert to our Holy Faith. I was born to a non-denominational protestant father and a Church of England mother who didn't know the Episcopal Church was the American branch of the Anglican Communion. As a result, I was "baptised" by having a rose dipped in water and tapped on my head three times, in the Presbyterian Church. After my father died, Mom married a Methodist and I became a Methodist. At about age twelve, already interested in theology, I began to doubt the validity of my "rose baptism" and our Methodist pastor "rebaptised" me by triple aspersion in valid form. At about the same age, I discovered my C of E grandmother's 1662 Book of Common Prayer. I was immediately drawn to the beauty of the Anglican Liturgy and at 16 was "confirmed" as an Anglican. By 22, however, I realised deep in my gut that the answer lay in the Church.
Then rebellion hit! I went through hinduism and most forms of leftism before I was 25. But God works in mysterious ways! My last stop in leftism was the CPUSA. This was long before Gorbachev and to be a communist was to look to the Soviet Union as a model. My natural curiosity led me to not only study marxism, but to explore the history and culture of Holy Mother Russia. This led to an interest in Orthodoxy and, ultimately, to my acceptance into the Serbian Orthodox Church at age 27 (the Russian Parish was
very ethnic, to the point that if you or your parents weren't born in the Old Country, you weren't really welcome!). Orthodoxy was very close to the Faith, but I didn't have to accept the Immaculate Conception, which as a Thomist, I refused to accept, since the Angelic Doctor logically "disproved it!
Then I moved from Kansas City, KS where I'd been Chrismated to Lawrence, KS which, at that time did not have an Orthodox Parish. As a result, I began to attend the Newman Center at the University of Kansas. Eventually, I went to the Benedictine Chaplain at the Center to discuss conversion. He gave me the documents of VII to read. I'm ashamed to say that they sounded pretty good at the time! However, as a Thomist, I still could not accept the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, so I was not yet ready to convert. (My Thomism will be a subject for a future post!)
A few years later, I moved to Wichita, KS which has (had?) two Orthodox Parishes of the Syrian Antiochian Church. However, Wichita is, geographically, a very large city and both parishes were a long way from my home. Even with no car, I did manage to get to Liturgy frequently, but when I couldn't make it, I walked to the Newman Center at the local university. I got to know the Chaplain well enough that, when he locked the Center up at night, if I was there, he locked me in to use the library (crash bar to get out!).
One day, at a party, Father asked me what was the ultimate authority in the Orthodox Church. The answer, of course is a no-brainer for any Orthodox: an Œcumenical Council. Then he asked another question: "Who has the authority to call a Council?" The answer is also a no-brainer, but with a sting in its tail! Only the Emperor has the authority to call a Council in Orthodoxy. The problem is that there is no Emperor! Even the most fanatical Imperialist Russian Orthodox, who would argue that Moscow was the Third Rome cannot argue with the extinction of the Empire in 1917/18.
Ergo, there is no ultimate authority in the Orthodx Church!
This thought percolated in my mind until a few weeks later when Father locked me into the Center on a Saturday night. I was in the library when I found a little booklet, published probably in the late 50's or early 60's, entitled "Catholics and Orthodox--Can They Unite?" I came upon the chapter on the Immaculate Conception and, to my amazement, I read a quote from one of my great heroes, Georgios Scholarios, the Patriarch Gennadios II. Gennadios was the first Patriarch of Constantinople after The City fell to the infidel jihadists (
Wikipedia article on Scholarios) and he was also a prominent Aristotelian-Thomist, one of the few in Orthodoxy, which tends to be Platonist. He had translated the
Summa Theologica into Greek and when he reached the section on the Immaculate Conception, he said, "Thomas was a wise man and indeed may be a Saint (he had been canonised in the West almst 200 years earlier), but on this point he was
wrong!" To my amazement, I learned that the doctrine had first been developed in the Orthodox East, but as the West came to view it favourably, the East reacted against it. With my last defense against Catholicism gone, I walked into the Chapel where our Lord was present in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, I fell to my knees in front of Him and cried! A few minutes later, I stood up, a Catholic!
The next morning, I went to Mass at the Parish Church (I wasn't a student, so I couldn't belong to the Newman Center) and after Mass asked the Pastor about being received. After talking, he said I already knew more than the Baptists and Methodists he was trying to convert (I left out that I started to study for the Orthodox priesthood) and I should go home, pray about it and let him know when I wanted to be received. A week later, at the evening Mass on Sunday, I recited the Creed in the Western form, promissed obedience to the Pope and was received.
OK, I'm a Catholic! How did I get to be an Evil Trad? That's the next installment. After that, I might tell you how I ended up a French Legitimist as well!
