A n i a ? wrote:Joshua,
Just want to let you know that as a daughter and grandaughter of ROCOR clergy, having grown up in Jordanville, I gotta tell ya that amoung quite a few of the ROCOR clergy considered both the members of the MP & Catacombs persecuted. Now as facts become more known about persecutions amoung the MP, including the clergy, more people are prone to be more understanding. I remember 15 years ago, when I started to pay attention to church politics (barely off my father's knee, but still, little ears...) there was talk about it even then.
My background is quite a different, but when I was in Sunday School I heard about persecutions of Christians in Russia, namely the incarceration and even execution of American evangelicals smuggling bibles into the country. Truly amazing sacrifice, and something that speaks to the image of God in us, but it doesn't mean they were any less heretical. I never meant to suggest the MP wasn't persecuted. However, you can't go and seek out a dozen or so heretics (living churchers) and have them elect a patriarch willing to co-operate with the authorities and not end up with something that's just plain wrong. The entire history of the MP is a grand tragedy, with many little tragedies and a few small victories.
Francis Bacon wrote that some minds see distinctions while others are inclined to see similarities and generalize, and that both distinctions and similarities are part of balanced judgement; if I might be permitted to step out of character and generalize for a moment, I would say that cradle Orthodox seem to me to have a tendency to see the similarities and ignore important differences, while converts tend see the differences and ignore the similarities. Converts are self-selecting distinguishers - they are those who have discerned the difference between the heterodox and the Orthodox. While some converts take this too far and end up completely alone, a lot of people born into Orthodoxy seem to me to lack a critical sense of discernment and fail to take notice of important differences between, say, the spiritual legacy of Metropolitan Joseph and that of Sergius.
I'll stop rambling - it's the end of a 22 hour day - got to love exam season!
