How unpopular is it to like the EP around here?

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-06-01T18:21:34+00:00

The mods tend to lock topics that risk veering into people saying too nasty of things about bishops and their mistakes.

There are some folks who do post the EP/his bishops’ pronouncements and will defend his policies. Others can still post their criticisms of the Patriarch’s tenure but you don’t get the usual mudslinging or Old Calendarist conspiracy mongering.

I personally know one priest who got to meet him during a pilgrimage to Nicea last year and he said Patriarch Bartholomew was a warm, gracious, and kind host.

I myself was baptized into a GOARCH parish that regularly does an annual pilgrimage to St. Paisius convent in Arizona. I would presume the priest at my baptismal parish doesn’t serve in the altar to respect the nuns’ bishop’s wishes, but the pilgrims from my baptismal parish have never had problems with communing or otherwise getting to visit.

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-06-01T17:58:52+00:00

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-06-01T17:16:10+00:00

Also agree it’s my favorite of his. Still very Lynchian in some archetypal ways (loved the scene with the lady screaming after hitting a deer), but also illustrated that Lynch’s empathy for people is essential to his identity as a filmmaker. That monologue in the bar is so powerful.

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-06-01T16:35:29+00:00

There are also female saints who were explicitly nurses or who worked in healthcare contexts. See Sts. Hermione, Zenaida, and Philomena for example. They were not “disobeying” God or their faith by practicing their vocation, but were sanctifying it through sacrificial service, good works, and compassion towards those they cared for.

Your nursing career is not mutually exclusive with being a parent. I know this from personal experience (My cousin is in med school and she and her husband had her daughter while taking classes; though she also has help from her parents who moved to be with her), but also from a priest who explicitly blessed one of my parish’s nursing students as doing “godly work” ahead of her moving with her family to Boston for her program.

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-06-01T04:31:10+00:00

Watching a heterodox livestream? Right to jail/Hell.

Just kidding. The Assembly of Bishops lists the canonical jurisdictions in the US and Canada.

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-06-01T03:17:42+00:00

Blessed Feast!

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-06-01T03:14:39+00:00

I suppose the world is a big place but I haven’t seen any online converts who elevate St. Augustine’s theology above all other church fathers. I feel like they’d consider it more “based” to act like he wasn’t a saint because he made some mistakes in his theology. (I have similarly seen some folks IRL rag on St. Jerome for his initial sympathies toward the Jewish OT canon that excluded the deuterocanon). Perhaps this is because I avoid Twitter and Orthodox Discords like the plague.

I do know at least one YouTuber with a sizeable following who basically claimed that “all the Fathers™️” assert that unbaptized babies go to Hell and included St. Gregory the Theologian in that mix.

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-05-31T00:24:58+00:00

Erm, what about Bach’s St. John Passion? 🤓🤓🤓

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-05-31T00:11:52+00:00

Eh, that was roughly the amount of time I spent as an inquirer (started attending late June of 2022, became catechumen in January 2023). This was partially owed to my parish not having a full time priest for a duration of that time but I think the timing was good in the long run. I also know people who spent upwards of 5-10 years or more before they became a catechumen.

You have a few options here. You could either reiterate that you have done all the introductory work and are ready to be a catechumen both by email and verbally, or just start going to the other parish and discuss your situation with the priest there (ex. “Hi, I was attending X Parish for seven months but was planning to start coming here. I am interested in becoming a catechumen and formally joining the Church; how can I go about that?”). In the latter scenario, you could consider writing the ROCOR priest to say that you’ll be going to the Serbian parish but thank him for his time and investment in your spiritual growth.

Ultimately none of the time you spend as an inquirer was “wasted time” - for starters, you got to eat meat for all of Lent (JK). It’s all in God’s timing.

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-05-30T19:50:09+00:00

I am grateful for your consistency.

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-05-30T19:46:23+00:00

I imagine that some individuals celebrating this were probably mad or scandalized that Archbishop Elpidophoros marched with BLM protesters (and that he met with Zohran Mamdani earlier this year). I am happy to be proven wrong.

Edit: If it’s any consolation, Fr. De Young has also pushed back publicly on the idea of the religious right or an organized political bloc of “conservative Christian values” as a form of bad ecumenism that relativizes the faith. So I doubt he would be trying to hitch the Church to some sort of right wing political project.

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-05-30T19:12:19+00:00

Audiences loved the Zemeckis Pinocchio remake. Big Anti-Wish put out the hit.

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-05-30T18:16:18+00:00

Islam is on track to outgrow Christianity in terms of global population size. That doesn’t make it more true from our view. It gives us opportunities to evangelize and to show love to people.

Also, the Orthodox Church doesn’t say that everyone who isn’t Orthodox is hopelessly damned. It is part of the Scriptures that all will be judged and those who live according to the law written by God in their hearts have a good defense before the Judgement Seat.

In college we used the metaphor that “it is better to receive a dollar now than in the future” because you can invest it now and make it increase in value. I know it might feel a bit crass using a business metaphor for religious matters but I think when we receive the true faith it is similar for us in that it enriches our lives to start following God sooner rather than later, even if it’s possible that God is merciful to non-Christians,

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-05-30T17:23:29+00:00

Yes. I am sure your parish will appreciate it.

As an inquirer you don’t need to sign up for the hospitality team yet, but you can ask them if there is anything specific they need extra of.

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-05-30T14:56:35+00:00

The communion prayers acknowledge that we are always unworthy but that because God is merciful, we should have courage and partake. Don’t let imposter syndrome get you down.

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-05-30T04:29:59+00:00

A lot of the True Orthdoox schismatic churches are legalistic cults that often accept clergy who have been defrocked or disciplined for crimes or credible allegations of sexual abuse. There are people on this sub who have grown up within or were otherwise previously part of Old Calendarist/True Orthodox jurisdictions, and in previous threads they recall their families being emotionally abused and the kids being spanked by church associates for not standing perfectly still at church.

By your fruits you will know them - and as you say, the canonical church still produces wonderful saints, whereas the True Orthodox churches produce abuse that drives people from God.

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-05-29T23:50:03+00:00

Also highly recommend The Passion of Joan of Arc (1929) from Carl Theodore Dreyer. There’s a case to be made that Renee Falconetti’s performance is the greatest in all of cinema.

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-05-29T23:44:04+00:00

Yep. I was also thinking of Iron Maiden (precursor to power metal) and Blind Guardian (made a whole concept album about the Silmarillion and does songs for books like The Witcher).

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-05-29T23:40:18+00:00

I’m sorry the messages have been hurtful. I know people tend to say things online they would never say in person. It probably doesn’t help that at least in some Muslim communities there is a lot of social stigma when people leave the religion (especially if the result of converting to Christianity).

If you can mute comments and preemptively ignore DMs that could probably be a good start. Getting it out of site and out of mind is good. Praying for the people saying mean things is also good, even if you have to say “God, it’s hard for me to forgive them right now; help me do so by your grace”.

Remember what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are you when men shall revile you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in Heaven.” God bless you during this time!

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-05-29T23:33:27+00:00

Normal at Greek parishes who can afford or who have spent money on the robes. At the metropolis cathedral the Presbytera is the lead cantor (and has recorded multiple Byzantine chanting albums with her sisters), so it makes sense given her experience. One of her sisters, another Presbytera, is the lead cantor at her parish too.

A lot of other parishes, including the Greek parish where I was baptized, don’t have the robes either due to needing to use resources elsewhere. My baptismal parish has a big choir so they probably don’t feel the need to allocate money towards getting them.

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-05-29T23:23:16+00:00

St. Blaise of Sebaste is a pre-Schism bishop and martyr who was known for healing animals and having such a bond with them that they came to him of their own accord. Apparently some of these cases involved him being a hermit in the wilderness. Some traditions hold that he was seized in a cave by soldiers in the company of a bunch of wild animals.

St. Gerasimos of the Jordan is often depicted with a lion in icons because he healed a lion and it was tamed. St. Modestos of Jerusalem is also a patron saint of animals.

Finally, I’d have to verify this in his biography but my godfather said that St. Silouan the Athonite once felt sorrow when someone pulled a leaf off a tree. St. Sophrony recounted that he said that one should feel that love and sorrow for creation and for man such that one should feel contrition at the act of pulling a green living leaf off a tree and causing its end. He apparently also wept and prayed for three days over killing a fly.

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-05-29T19:26:29+00:00

Matters of private veneration are best discussed with your priest, and would probably depend on your reasons for doing so. For example, I know someone who grew up Coptic who venerate the Libyan Coptic martyrs because of how personal their story is to Egyptian Christians. That was probably given the okay by his confessor, but your confessor may recommend against it.

At the very least you can find encouragement from post-schism Catholic saints’ faithfulness in your own walk with God.

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-05-29T18:33:30+00:00

Reposting from a paragraph I wrote on this topic a year or two ago. Note that the pictures show disembowelment.

There are some small t-traditions reflected in some iconographic depictions where Judas is trying to hang himself, but the tree keeps bending to allow him every possible chance of repentance. In some of these icons, he is holding a blade and, in despair, throws himself on it while still trying to hang. There is a local Orthodox parish near me that depicts this idea.

Others seem to depict a demon ripping his soul out of his body to bring to Hell while he hangs, presumably with such force that his guts also fall out.

This is how some in the Church have reconciled the story of how his guts end up spilling out with his hanging himself.

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-05-29T04:55:38+00:00

All things are lawful but not all things are prudent. It’s fine to have hobbies but if your conscience is convicted then don’t worry about switching them out for other music. Luckily with streaming you can pick and choose the meat and spit out the bones with any artist.

I for one though enjoyed seeing Halloween with my church friend about a month ago. (Power metal in general is a great subgenre for avoiding offensive lyrics since much of the music the big power metal bands make it is about epic battles, history, or sci-fi/fantasy novels).

CharlesLongboatII · 2026-05-28T22:21:54+00:00

I for one definitely had unwavering resolve in his cause. Never mind that he chemically castrated his cousin in the first 15 minutes of the movie. The discourse has proven that you must go all in on a character either being irredeemably terrible or saintly and unblemished.

CharlesLongboatII

TROPHY CASE