For Your Edification

I recommend a recent Smithsonian Production

...on Christianity -notably it's church history from the time of Christ. How did a band of merry rebel Jewish people following a healer end up being such a force in the world with 2 Billion followers of all combined denominations? It is a well done fascinating production that ran this past week while most of us in New England were snowed in and under. Good program by which to sip hot chocolate.
It traced the 2 great schisms, notably that with Constantinople/the Byzanine world and later the Great Reformation. It may surprise Catholics to learn that they represent only half of Christendom. There are one billion followers of papal catholicism about 800,000 Protestants in 800 denominations and around 200,000- 300,000 "Orthodox" Christians spreading from Jerusalem where the church was founded to Russia- the "Russian Orthodox" church developed after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks around the 11th century as people moved north.
"Greek" Orthodox is so named not because it started in what we think of now as Greece, but because throughout the early Christian world Greek was spoken from the time of Alexander the Great's conquests through the entire Middle East region.
It may surprise Catholics also to learn that the chanting in the orthodox world, or forms of liturgical music are more aligned with the Hebrew worshipped at the Temple in Jerusalem than the Gregorian style chanting used in Catholic liturgy after Pope Gregory. Orthodox music is truly hauntingly beautiful. Also more reminiscent of Temple Priest garb, the headwear of Orthodox priests more closely mirrored their Hebrew priestly counterparts.

If the effort at Eceumenicism is truly sincere it behooves us, one and all, to humbly try to understand the different forms and manifestations of the Spirit that have resulted in these various expressions of the body of Christ. A lot of reformation evolved as a result of insupportable intolerable corruption involving what was viewed as a perversion of the gospel message from the purest hearted most educated of the Christian world. The same can be said today.

In America we don't have any concept of how difficult it could become if church and state were not separate, but in Europe they battled to the bone over it and it caused lots of immigration to this country at its founding. People were insistent we not have a church run state. It is disheartening when people now in Italy are engaging in a "debaptism" ceremony to unbaptize themselves because it means that they are not assessed a tax or levy associated with membership in the catholic church. Baptism of course is a spiritual sacrament mirrored after the Mikvah (the cleansing pools around the Jerusalem Temple for example, of which there are plenty of references in scripture) and was a profoundly Jewish purity ritual. (Remember the water jugs at the Wedding at Cana- part of another cleansing purity ritual.) The fact that one church would claim to "own" that and thus because they perform the sacrament, civilly tax people who are then members is alien to American culture.
This is just one way that the gospel message can be perverted- and one reason religion in America is flourishing in a way unlike anywhere else where people have become jaded and skeptical because of the earthly power influence of institution. It is said in Europe no more than one in ten people who self-identify with catholicism actually regularly practice or attend weekly Mass whereas in America is it more like one in three.

The danger of disheartenment is obvious when church gets over its head into politics and tries to manipulate political structures- and aligns itself too strongly with only one political party.
This causes obviously loss of respect for the institution which is anathemetic to effective evangelism. Another disheartening feature is when a single interest group takes over a parish or Archdiocese to cater to whatever industry is strongest in an area for the money. In DC it is too obviously defense contractors and real estate wanna be mini-moguls. Because what other industry is there here? Do you see any factories making anything in Potomac?

When there are enough voices of dissent and discontent it is not wise to stew in a Dominican Inquisition. People will just leave. Especially when it takes positions that are just too ridiculous for words for the sake of tradition.