Monday, October 28, 2013

What's the first thing you talk about...

...on an Orthodox discussion site when some inquirer discusses wanting to visit some local parishes?

If it's ever something about schismatics, Old Calendarists, or anything like that, please stop doing that. Even if they mention "Old Calendarist" in their initial thing, as the odds are that they don't know what means. Introducing any sort of discussion about "legitimacy" only gives the following impression:

  1. There is a legitimate and substantial schismatic movement.
  2. People converting to Orthodoxy have to consider carefully where they will end up.
  3. People on the old calendar are likely to be Old Calendarist.
  4. Their friendly local parish might be schismatics they should be careful of.
Getting through to people that Greek and Russian are really the same is hard enough, confusing them by discussing the 1% that are schismatics doesn't help, especially if they're so socially backward as to be using the internet (apart from The Facebook) and posting on web-logs and such.

I only bring this up because I saw on some internet somewhere some guy wondering about what the true Orthodoxy is and how to choose and mentioned an "Old Calendarist" parish nearby. Based on what little he said, it seemed highly likely that the parish was likely to be "Normaldox" on the Old Calendar, not a member of the 1%. Discussing the 1% would not alleviate his existential concern, but rather only add to the distress. And it turned out that, yes, they were indeed Normaldox. So all the discussion of "Old Calendarists" could only serve to do what? Libel a nice local parish and reinforce the false notion of schisms being commmon things you have to look out for.