Posted by Eric (September 18, 2006 at 1:19 pm)
In response to a post a couple months ago on my personal blog, Square Zero, entitled, “The Orthodox and Contraception” a Byzantine Catholic named Karen commented that the Orthodox ambiguity on the contraception issue was the one thing holder her back from converting to Orthodoxy. We had a brief exchange in the comments section of that post, but then I expanded on the issue she had raised in a longer entry entitled, “Catholic v. Orthodox”.
I thought the issues I addressed there, and the subsequent discussion in the comments to the post, might be of interest to readers of BEMA. But rather than cross-post the original article here, and split up the discussion between two different blogs, I thought it would be better to link to the article at Square Zero and invite BEMA readers to visit.
I am especially keen for more knowledgable folks to address some of the important issues Karen has raised, like:
- The Filioque
- The Immaculate Conception
- The monarchial papacy
You can read the full post here.
Posted by Karl (September 8, 2006 at 10:41 pm)
Jeffrey Tucker wrote an article called I Hate Converts (and I’m a Convert) which makes interesting and humorous points about the foibles of new converts. He writes about converts that they have a problem: They become know-it-alls who appoint themselves as the fixer-uppers of the whole faith. They pester people who have been Catholic all their lives about their apparent lack of piety. He then gives many examples of the silly things he says converts do, pestering priests, bishops, and popes about the perceived faults of the Church. They have seen the true light, and wish to enlighten everyone else.
Tucker is right that such things do happen. But I think his article tends to support the position that the zeal of the convert is some sort of aberration, something one ought to grow out of. He suggests that converts should take time and keep to themselves for a while: “I suggest that converts first live the real day-to-to-day lives of Catholics for a while–and it’s not always easy—before they dictate to the rest of us how to live.” As true as his advice is, I see in the use of the loaded word “dictate” a bit of resentment of convert zeal.
How should we relate to converts, we who seek to be Byzantine evangelists? I think we should take as our example the original convert, Paul of Tarsus.
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