Posted by Dean Calvert
on 12/24/2008, 11:45 am, in reply to "Orthodox "Shame" in Muslim World?"
Hi Leo,
Merry Christmas.
I don't know if Hermie is right in his comments below, but your story reminds me of something a Slavic iconographer told me in Cleveland at one of the OCL meetings...might be the same mentality here.
"I work with small Russian churches," he told me at breakfast,"they are nothing like you Greeks...you guys talk to the relatives in the Old Country, you go back and visit often, you send your kids to camps over there...the Russian mentality is completely different...most of the people who are here from Russia feel lucky to have escaped, and they NEVER want to go back."
He went on to further describe that we (non Slavs) need to remember that for the 40 years of the Cold War, it was basically an embarrassment to be Russian in this country.
I don't know if "shame" is the right word, but there is clearly some sort of pathology surrounding many of the Orthodox immigrants who have landed here...which seems to have begun with having been persecuted in the Old Country (by communists or Muslims).
On the other hand, as Fr. Roman Braga told an assembled group at St. Andrew House a few years ago, "God loved the church so much in the communist countries that He persecuted her...and now the churches are full over there...look at the churches here...empty."
Maybe the same can be said of the churches in the Muslim world...???
Just a thought.
Best Regards,
Dean
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