Wednesday, November 14, 2007

The Need to Engage Good Eastern Orthodox Bloggers

I have wanted to hit more on Catholic /Eastern Orthodox relations. I think there are some elements in the Catholic/Orthodox world that just go to war on each other. I have to admit I have honest and fruitful discussion with SOME Eastern Orthodox bloggers and forum chatters tedious at best. However I am not alone in thinking this is important. In fact the healing of this schism is important.

One Catholic , Ascent to Mount Carmel, who is on the way to the priesthood echoed similar thoughts at his post Faith and Philosophy. Now there are some Eastern Orthodox blogs such as the one highlighted here at The Canterbury Tales in today's post Pope Benedict XVI Falsely Accused of Nestorian Heresy that are just out to lunch. There are others that seem to respond to Catholics with the line "It is Eastern thing, you with your Western viewpoint and Latinizations JUST CAN"T UNDERSTAND!!!!"

Well of course this is not helpful. I have seen Catholic offenders too. Before Father Kimel shut down Pontifications it got quite lively there between the Orthodox and Catholics. Sadly nothing though has replaced the far ranging discussion we used to have at the good father's blog. At least as I have see.

However there are good blogs on the Catholic side and Orthodox side that are doing good stuff. One of those is Cathedra Unitatis-An Eastern Orthodox Christian Looks at the Church of Rome. I will try to update this post tonight with some other good quality Catholic and Eastern Orthodox blogs that interact with each of OUR traditions. In the end it should be one tradition. The more I like look at this supposed disagreement many issues seem to be looking at different sides of the same coin. For instance see the above mention Orthodox blogger and her post on purgatory at Another tortured East-West issue. The issue of "Original Sin" was another hot button issue over the Spring that I am pretty much convinced we are all on the same page about.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Overall, the american orthodox blogs tend to be polemical exercises. I must confess the same sin myself. The Orthodox blogs I do enjoy are ones that speak to Catholic themes but using the Eastern metaphor. For example, the Ochlophobist could practically be considered a distributist. ochlophobist.blogspot.com

James H said...

Thanks for the link. I am going to try to spend some time looking this weekend for good Orthodox blogs