#56 UNDERSTANDING THE FIRST RELIGION: ORTHODOXY + Father Michael Butler

Why has this been kept from me all my life? What is Orthodoxy without losing my faith?

I'm gonna be provocative here. I am actually a convert from the Catholic Church. Was there something special that happened at that Orthodox service?

I heard the song that creation sings to its creator. Many people are assuming that Orthodoxy split off from Catholicism.

What is the real story? The Orthodox Church is the original church that goes all the way back to the time of the apostles.

What's a misconception about the Orthodox Church that you want to clarify? Misconception about the Orthodox Church?

Um. Mm, that's good. Hello, hello.

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For many, Orthodoxy is something that they've heard of, but they don't understand, like me. And others like me, they grew up in Orthodoxy, but they didn't really grasp its origins, or its depth, or what's going on, because for me, it was in Russian.

So I have questions today. Where did the Orthodox Church come from? Did it even split from Catholicism?

Like, what are the roots of it? Or is it something entirely different, like a whole new denomination, different beliefs, dogmas, doctrines?

I don't know. And maybe the big question that we can explore today is what is Orthodoxy without losing my faith?

What is it without losing the grounding beliefs that I have, and is exploring this wrong in the eyes of God?

So today, we're gonna jump into the show, diving into the history, the theology, and the traditional doctrines of Orthodoxy, and what makes it unique, and what other people are rediscovering today.

So for me, I was raised Russian Orthodox, but I was going to the services. They live a different calendar.

And so I have appreciation for it. The church itself is beautiful. It seems like a restructuring of heaven, with the golden icons, the incense, the singing.

I wore a babushka, you know, women on one side, men on the other, standing the entire time. I went to confession.

But I didn't really grasp why I was doing what I was doing. What were the purposes behind all of those specific differences that I no longer experience in my non -denominational church?

So today, I wanted to bring on Father Michael Butler to help answer those questions. You have been an

Orthodox priest for about 30 years. You're in Michigan and Ohio. What's up, Midwesterners? You have a

PhD in church history and patristics. We're gonna have to explore that, because I don't know what that is. And you've taught at the university level.

You've trained individuals for church leadership. You've worked across many disciplines, and you're a husband and a father.

Welcome to the show, Father Michael. And I'm so excited to have you here. Could you please start by explaining a little bit about yourself, how you got into this, and then we'll get into the roots and all of the meat of this.

Yeah. First off, thank you so much for having me here. It's a privilege to be able to talk, and it's always a joy to share my faith with people who are interested in learning something about it.

I learned years ago, or I had a great distaste early on for polemics and for arguing.

And so I've shied away from that for most of my life. But if there's a genuine interest, I'm more than glad to answer questions and to bear witness to what

I believe. Yeah, I am actually a convert from the Catholic Church. I found orthodoxy when

I, yes, I was, I had one profound kind of lightning bolt conversion experience, actually, when

I was 15 years old. Sort of the whole backstory, which some people find interesting.

I lost my daddy when I was eight years old to an industrial accident, and my mother got mad at God and quit taking us to Mass.

But I always, I liked going to church, and I continued to do so. Mama remarried a little later.

She was 28 years old with, you know, widow with two young children. And my stepfather took us, you know, to another place to live.

And as I got into junior high school, I fell into a bad crowd, and I was stealing from the school and got caught.

And though Mama didn't go to church anymore, she was perfectly capable of laying on a layer of Catholic guilt with the best of them.

You know, stealing is a mortal sin. You can go to hell for that, which mortified me.

I hadn't thought about that, you know. So I went to confession for the first time in my life, really, and I do not remember the confession at all, except that the priest realized he had a very tender, wounded soul on the other side, and was very gentle with me, which was beautiful.

But walking out of the church, now, I was in South Texas on the Mexican border. It was, so it was very moderate, the temperatures, probably in the 60s, because it's subtropical down there like Florida.

Right. It was February the 4th, 1975 at 4 .55

in the afternoon. I remember - 4 .55? I remember it like it was yesterday. I know when it happened.

And I walked out of that church and down the sidewalk, and the world changed. The light went golden.

I heard the sound, or the song, that creation sings to its creator. I cannot describe the music, except somehow, you know, grass is soprano and trees are bass.

That's as close as I've ever been able to come. And I knew in an instant that there was a

God, He was personal, and that He loved me. And it turned me inside out.

And - This was just leaving confession. Just walking out of a church from a confession. And I have lived, actually, the constant in my life is that I have lived the rest of my life out of gratitude for that moment.

And I'm here with you today, you know, out of gratitude for that moment. And so that was the start.

And I wanted to, you know, I felt a calling that I had a vocation to be a priest. And I pursued that through university.

And then my senior year in college, I discovered the Orthodox Church on a visit to Pittsburgh. I was gonna do graduate work at Duquesne, and discovered, actually, the

Byzantine Rite of the Catholic Church. And through that, to compress the story, it started a huge fight.

I literally laid awake for about six weeks wrestling. My head said I had to be Catholic. My heart said, you gotta be

Orthodox. And I finally decided to follow my heart. And I have never looked back.

It was also about the same time that I began dating the woman that I would eventually marry. So I said, I'm gonna follow my heart on this one too.

So two thumbs up on following your heart in some situations. So - 20 out of 10, do recommend.

Yeah. So I just wanna zone in on that. It was a difficult, like your whole life with up until college,

Catholic. And then you just experienced a Orthodox service and were converted, or, and then you kind of wrestled with that decision, or was there something that special happened that happened at that Orthodox service?

No, it was simply beautiful. It was just like what you had said at the beginning, you know, it was beautiful.

This is what worship is supposed to be like. Why has this been kept from me all my life? And it's part of what's always attracted me to Orthodoxy is that, well,

I will say this, and please, I preface this by saying this is completely inadequate and very partial, but beginning to attend an

Orthodox service now and again, gave me just enough distance from my Catholic past to be able to articulate a little bit of what issue

I had with the Catholic church. I didn't know I had one. It sort of seemed to me, again, grossly inadequate, but it seemed to me that rather than sanctifying the world, the

Catholic church had been secularized by it. And there is an aspect of Orthodoxy, as you know from your own experience, that is very incarnational, that, as you say, it does bring heaven to earth.

Our churches, our temples are modeled on the heavenly model that we see in the book of Revelation that prophet

Isaiah saw when he saw heaven, that Moses saw on Mount Sinai when he saw the heavenly tabernacle.

Our churches are built on the same model. They're an archetypal structure designed to show heaven and earth intersecting.

And coming together. And everything in it is done intentionally in order to recreate and to make present the heavenly worship and the heavenly liturgy for us to be able to share in.

And somehow I grasped that intuitively. And for me, it was an incredible moment.

That's insane that you grasped it intuitively because I was a child. Like I started just going to non -denominational when

I was in college. So for me, especially in a different language, you're like, this is what I'm supposed to do as a kid is just go to my dad's church every other

Sunday. And it never clicked for me. So that's interesting, especially coming from like a

Catholic mass, which is equally as beautiful, as equally, any cathedral is gorgeous. Can be.

Oh, okay. At my university, I did not find it particularly beautiful.

Got it, got it. Nor the guitar mass approach to worship particularly reverent, so. Got it.

When I was in college, I was discussing with a guy and he was saying that he's studying church, world history, world religions, whatever.

And he was like, oh yeah. And part of my education is I have to go to different denominations, churches.

Sorry, I'm trying to do this right. And he's like, and I loved the Orthodox church. And of course me going to church my entire life, not really getting it, not feeling it inside.

I was like, why? What do you mean? Isn't it A, boring? B, you don't know what's going on. C, doesn't make sense.

Because again, I'm speaking from personal experience of like, it hasn't reached my heart. And he was the one that was like,

I love it. It reminds me of heaven. There's no instruments, the smells, the sights, everything.

And that's where I got that comment from. So the fact that you just intuitively picked up on it. Okay, let me. Oh my gosh.

Let me tell you this too. I don't know why this is entirely. I have my suspicions. Orthodoxy appeals to men in ways.

And we currently, for the last six or seven years, we have had this huge influx of young men into the

Orthodox Church. I mean, I'm talking thousands are coming to Orthodoxy right now.

I must have three dozen. I get at least one visitor, one young man coming every single

Sunday to check us out. And this has been going on for well over a year. Every single

Sunday. What is it? Like, what hooks them? I think there are a couple of things. First, transcendent meaning.

They're looking for something really big, really substantial to believe in.

You know, a sense of holiness, transcendence, and tradition that we're not gonna change.

We're not changing with the fads. We're not so contemporary, meaningful, and relevant that God only knows what's gonna pass for worship this week or be embarrassing, you know, or happy, clappy, and all emotional where they'd feel uncomfortable.

It's fairly set. You know, the liturgy is fairly set. It doesn't change too much. I think they take comfort in that.

But a transcendent purpose to believe in. And second, structure. I think structure, that the liturgy is structured, that we have a rule of prayer, you know, that we all practice daily of morning and evening prayer.

There is a regular cycle of services. There are regular days during the course of the week and throughout the year when we fast.

There are days on which we feast. There is a spiritual father. I think for a lot of younger guys, they're sometimes looking for dad 2 .0,

you know, and if the priest has half a lick of sense, he realizes, okay, I know what these guys are looking for, you know, and can fulfill that need.

And part of the attraction to Orthodox for me was that also it's very personal.

You know, in sort of the Catholic world, sort of the allegiance, if you will, is to the local parish.

Oh, I belong to St. Gabriel's. I belong to Our Lady of Perpetual Health. In Orthodoxy, there's a lot more personal and close contact with the priest as one spiritual father.

So like anybody who's at all serious about his or her faith is going to have basically a regular spiritual director and a regular relationship with the pastor precisely for those spiritual things.

Interesting, yeah. And so, you know, for a lot of guys, younger guys who are trying to figure life out, who are trying to grow up, who are trying to get out of late adolescence and into early adulthood, and maybe are having a little trouble with that, another older man, a mentor, you know, a spiritual coach is very appealing and can be genuinely helpful to them in that.

So I think that's a lot of what's attracting the men. Yeah, that's a really good point.

And you feel like based off your Catholic experience and my own with my non -denominational is like, I have a pastor,

I love Pastor JT, he's the best, but I just see Pastor JT on Sundays during the early service.

And you would say like kind of in the same way the Catholic priest would be kind of only available during mass.

There wouldn't be any, they get off the stage and they know you by name, they're willing to meet with you in your living room.

Is that the main difference you're seeing here with orthodoxy? I think so. Our churches tend to be a little smaller.

I mean, I had a good friend when I was priest in Cleveland with very tight with the local

Catholic priest. He had 5 ,000 parishioners. Well, it's not possible to be intimate with 5 ,000 people.

I have just over 300 here where I am. And this is a good sized congregation for an orthodox church.

And granted, I'm struggling a little nowadays, but I try to know everyone by name. When we do have confession, it's face to face.

I don't hide behind a screen. Oh, is that terrifying? Oh my God. Terrifying?

Yeah, I, okay. Beautiful. When I, this might be a funny story, but this was again, like me being a child.

And I think I'd have a very different experience if I did it today. But I remember vividly, you know, going to confession on one of the

Sundays as a kid. I was probably like 13, maybe 12. It's been a long time.

And I remember going into confession. We had the priest and I'm pretty sure there was a veil, but I remember just like telling him like, oh,

I stole some candy, whatever. What, you know, I was a child. So one of my sins. And he would always react like, oh, oh, that's bad.

And he'd always have these reactions where I'd be like, no, never. May I apologize for it? We listen and we don't judge.

No, so I can't imagine if I saw his face. That would be even more scary. No, it's very good.

In fact, we have a group. I think I have seven or eight that are, they're about seven years old, which is when we start kids coming to confession.

In fact, I'm meeting with them Sunday morning because Friday of next week in the evening, we have a

Vesper service and they're all coming, making their first confession right there before Holy Week.

And so I'm gonna be there with them. We're gonna walk them through it. I'm gonna put the stole over their head in pretense so they know this is what's gonna happen and explain it all to them.

But they see me and you know, I'm there with them at coffee hour. I've talked to their church school classrooms.

I'm not a stranger. Granted, yeah, the first time you have to stand up in front of somebody else and say what you did wrong.

It's a little terrifying and I get that, but you learn to be gentle with tender souls and honest to God, I'd rather hear children's confessions over adult confessions any day.

Honestly, I really would. I'm sure. You know, childish sins are, they're not beautiful, but you see that innocence that's still there and it's a genuine blessing to me to encounter that.

Yeah, I'm sorry. And to be able to speak. And you know, for one difference in Orthodox versus Roman Catholic approaches or all

Western confessions that may use, that may use Western confessions that use confession,

Western churches that practice confession. Let me make it a little clearer. Is that in the

Orthodox church, I don't forgive sins. I can't, I don't say I absolve you.

Who's Michael Butler to be forgiving sins? We always use a sort of a passive voice way of saying this.

So all that you have said to me, an unworthy man and all that you've not said due to ignorance or forgetfulness,

God forgives you now and in the life to come. I'm just a witness bearing testimony for what these children say before Christ.

I stand in for the entire congregation and hear their public confession to Christ.

Okay, we're already getting into a few things, which is what are the main differences of Orthodoxy to let's say

Catholicism. And I think that this is a great place because I feel like, yeah, as like a evangelical

Protestant, wherever I fall, it would be, everything goes through the Lord. And now there's this aspect of confession, which in my churches, my belief,

I can just go straight to God. What's the point of confession in front of a priest and already you're making - Because it tells us in scripture to confess our sins one to another, not to go goof off or do whatever it is that you do and then go and hide in your room and never tell anybody.

I tell you what, knowing that I was gonna have to spill this, spill what I was thinking about doing to another priest, you know, has stopped me from misbehaving a few times in my life.

Okay. Wow, that accountability. Remember, that's like a promise you'll believe the Bible, you know, confess your sins one to another.

That's in the imperative voice. That's not a suggestion. Okay. So go do it.

So with the confession, seems very similar to Catholicism and many people are assuming that Orthodoxy split off from Catholicism and we kind of see that similarity.

What is the real story? Because to me - I will get to that. And also answer another thing because people will assume that in Orthodoxy, just because we have a practice of private confession like the

Catholics, that we have the same understanding. It is not so. In the Catholic West, they tend to take a juridical or a legal view of confession.

You've committed these sins, they're like crimes, you need to pay a fine or there's a penalty for them.

And they see it in juridical terms. In the Orthodox Church, we don't see it in juridical terms at all.

We see it in therapeutic terms. These is an illness in your soul. You're showing the physician the diseases in your soul and I'm there to help provide a cure and suggest means of treatment.

So I don't impose penances on people. They don't have to go and pay. Jesus paid for the sins on the cross.

They don't need to pay anything else. But maybe there are some things that they could do if they're suffering from anger, if they're suffering from lust, if they're eat up with vainglory or their pride is beginning to get in the way or they're arguing with their spouses or whatever it may happen to be, then

I can suggest some things that might be helpful. And again, it's seen as a mode of therapy to cure the soul rather than paying a fine or declaring yourself guilty before a judge.

So at any rate, that's okay. Enough about confession. The, to answer a number of your questions, which

I saw ahead of time. The, yeah, the Orthodox Church is the original church that goes all the way back to the time of the apostles.

If you look at - Okay, walk me through that. Our Lord preached to his apostles.

The apostles had their disciples. Paul went around establishing bishops and elders in various cities.

Those ordained people subsequently, the church spread. They all wrote stuff.

We have historical record, writings from the earliest Christian times, bearing witness to the historical continuity of the

Church of Christ. It didn't end when the last apostle died. Or, you know, as some think, you know, when

Emperor Constantine proclaimed Christianity legal in the empire, the church has always been there.

And there's a clear historical record to that. And we can trace our beliefs and our practices, our ordination and everything in an unbroken lineage all the way back to the

New Testament. Okay. That is the church. It ain't invisible.

It didn't start with the Lutheran Reformation. You know, it didn't start with the break between the

Catholic West and the Orthodox East, which I'll get to in a moment. You know, it still exists.

I see. So this, like, again, just like simplifying it down for me is the church that I experienced with, you know, men on the left, women on the right, the head coverings, the modesty, no instruments in church, the confessions, the communions, the calendar, the fast and the feast, all of that was the same practices that the apostles were following and preaching to follow.

Very, but very close. There's been some growth over time. Yeah. I mean, they weren't keeping great

Lent and fasting 40 days before Pascha at the earliest centuries, but they were doing it by the third century.

It's very clear. I mean, we have the epistles of St. Ignatius of Antioch, whose teacher

Polycar probably knew John the evangelist, that there were bishops in every city, that they gathered together on Sunday for the

Eucharist, that they believed it was the true body and blood of Christ, that there were bishops, priests, and deacons, already a hierarchical liturgy in the church, that there was a time of preparation for baptism.

All of that, it's clear. Now, been there since the beginning.

I hate to ask the big questions so early on, but where do we get Catholicism then? Because I feel like they would argue the same exact thing.

Well, they would. Okay, and here is where the Catholics and us are going to have a little bit of a disagreement here, but -

And this is just to understand. I'm not here to divide it. No, no, no, it's fine. All of my education was

Roman Catholic. They educated me at University of Dallas and at Fordham University. I have great friends, and I have great love and respect for the

Catholic Church and for my brother, Catholic priests, especially, who give up so much and work so very hard in their churches and all.

But we will disagree on this thing. The church was one. The traditional date for the

Great Schism, or the split, was 1054. And the only thing that happened, in the years, the centuries went by, fewer people in the

Latin -speaking West could speak Greek, which was the language of the eastern half of the

Roman Empire, and fewer people in the east could speak Latin. And so linguistic difficulties, the barbarian invasions, which caused huge societal disruptions in the northern part of the

Byzantine Empire, and certainly throughout the whole of Western Europe, caused huge cultural shifts.

And also, the two churches, or the two halves of the Roman Empire, just sort of drifted apart from historical reasons.

And over time, throw into the mix the rise of Islam, which the

Muslims took to pirating early on, and it became extremely dangerous to travel around the

Mediterranean. And so trade and commerce, and just back and forth, became dangerous.

I mean, you'd end up a galley slave if you were captured. I mean, so it's just cultural separation and isolation, kind of, they just sort of drifted apart.

And then in 1054, a cardinal came to visit in Constantinople, and there was a rather pushy patriarch in Constantinople at the time, and Cardinal Umbert was kind of a pushy man himself.

And there was a bit of a falling out. So Cardinal Umbert marched into the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia one

Sunday, and laid a writ of excommunication against Patriarch Michael on the high altar, and then fled.

Okay, so that would explain the split. Yeah, and then Patriarch Michael says, well, to hell with this, we'll excommunicate

Cardinal Umbert as well. That was all that really happened. I mean, there continued to be interaction and trade.

I mean, there's a reference in the 12th or 13th century in Byzantium, there was some

Catholic clergy came with Venetian traders, because when things were better, there was trade between the

Italian city -states and Constantinople, and some bishops showed up, and they said, are we in communion with those guys?

I don't know, let's go check the records. So they went and checked the archives. It says, seems like it.

Everybody had communion together. So things didn't really turn sour until 1204, when the

Fourth Crusade, rather than going on to the Middle East and taking care of the Muslims over there, sacked

Constantinople, threw out the emperor, threw out the patriarch, and set up a

Roman Catholic Latin patriarch in the place of the ecumenical patriarchy.

That left a really sour taste in our mouth, and that's really the beginning of the hostilities.

You know, in 1966, the late Pope Paul VI and the late

Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople, they rescinded those excommunications from 1054.

They said, that was stupid, we shouldn't have done that. Let's just kill those, and they did. But over the course of time, the

Catholic Church has added some teachings and some practices, which the whole universal church never approved of.

See, in orthodoxy, we do, and in the early church, everything was done by councils. The bishops all got together, they debated, they came to a conclusion, and that was the way that decisions were made.

That was the way doctrine was established. They worked it out and fought it out and debated it.

But because of historical reasons, the Pope of Rome got to be really important and claimed universal authority over the whole church.

It was never accepted in the rest of the church. So papal diplomacy, and later on, in the 19th century, infallibility came up.

Those are big sticking points for us. Secondly, they have a note, they added a word to the creed, which had been written by us at the

Council of Nicaea in 325 and amended a little in the year 381. And they said that the

Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son. That was never part of the original creed.

It was never agreed to by the universal church. It was a one -sided insertion in the

Latin West, and we never agreed to that, and we have serious theological differences over that.

It's not worth going into in this interview, but there are ramifications to it.

Because simply, we are made in God's image. If you do not understand

God correctly, you will not understand the image correctly. It affects our understanding of God and of humanity and of our relationships with each other.

I'm sorry. There was a little bit of a dropout. Yeah. Once you said, sorry, it glitched.

When you said, if you don't understand the Father. If you don't understand, we are made in God's image. So if you don't understand who

God is, you cannot understand who the image is. So a misunderstanding of the theology of the

Trinity affects not only our relationship with God, but our understanding of ourselves and our relationships with each other.

So if I'm understanding the timelines correctly, it would be - This is why deep theological issues, they work out in practical ways, and why people fought over them.

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Take a breath, slow down, and dwell in the good things. Now, back to the show. Okay. So just so I can like really paint kind of the differences, just so I can understand both, not to create any divide, but after, with the apostles, we have an

Orthodox church and around 325 is the Council of Nicaea. At what point did we have that break into what is known as the

Catholic church, which is then later we have that great schism and which is later, you know, rescinded.

But where exactly do we see this division between the Orthodox and the Catholic, I wanna say traditions, denominations,

I don't know what the correct word would be here. Yeah, it's not denominations. We are pre -denominational.

Okay. The denominational world is a Protestant convention. Oh, okay.

Only exists there. The Catholic church and the Orthodox were one in the same for centuries.

As I said, they gradually grew apart. And at some point, like I say, probably with the sacking of Constantinople was a real low point, but our clergy do not, we consider each other in schism.

Okay. We do not concelebrate with each other. I can't invite a Catholic priest to come here.

I cannot receive communion in a Catholic church. We do not acknowledge the decrees of the

Roman Catholic councils or the decrees of the Pope. They don't recognize ours and they don't come to our chalice for communion either.

Got it. Do they have sacraments? Yes. Does their church produce saints?

Absolutely. But we are not in communion with each other and we say that they have a number of doctrines, most notably papal primacy and infallibility, the filioque and the creed, and this later notion of the immaculate conception of the

Virgin Mary, which was never part of the tradition of the church.

So those are, I mean, for big reasons, that. For sort of foundational theological reasons, those are the real ones.

Do you mind explaining those a little bit more? Because I understood like one of those words. Papal primacy is that the notion that the

Pope has universal jurisdiction over the entire church. Got it. And Orthodoxy does not agree with that.

No, the only person with jurisdiction over my church is my local bishop. Okay. And he sits on a synod with other bishops of the

Orthodox Church and together they decide how the church is run. But the next bishop over, or my bishops, the head of our

Holy Synod is our Metropolitan Archbishop. He can't say, this parish has to do this.

That's only my bishop has authority to tell me what to do. Whereas in the Roman situation, the

Pope of Rome can put himself into the business of any diocese, any order, any parish directly.

He has local control from Rome. We say, that's way too much authority. That was never the practice in the ancient church.

That was never the system set up by the councils when the church agreed together that this is the way we're gonna run everything.

It was a later thing done in the Latin West. And there may have been good historical reasons why that worked for them, but it doesn't work for us.

Papal infallibility is the notion that was formalized at the First Vatican Council in 1870s that says that the

Pope of Rome, when he is speaking formally, the technical term is ex cathedra, from his throne, when he is articulating dogma for the

Catholic church, he is infallible. He is incapable of making error when he's giving voice to the dogmatic teaching of the

Catholic church. And that was even reemphasized a little more at the

Second Vatican Council in the 1960s where in one of their documents, he went even further, the council went even further to say that the decrees of the

Roman pontiff non ex consensu ecclesiae, that is without the consent of the church, are justly styled irreformable, which means that the

Pope alone is able to decree or articulate doctrine for the

Catholic church. He does not need the agreement, the consent, the involvement of the rest of the bishops, for example.

Which is what the Orthodox would do. We would have to have a council and hammer that out together. Infallibility feels like it should just be reserved for Jesus.

Is that the correct type of thinking on that? Yeah, how is Jesus going to tell us what to believe about this or that when a particular issue comes up?

I mean, the church has the authority given by Christ to bind and to loose. Okay, that's where the church has authority to say you're in, you're out, this is right, this is wrong, this is what

Christians must do, this is what Christians cannot do. And as times change and new situations come about, the church has got to speak to things.

There's nothing in scripture about transgenderism. What, are we going to be silent on one of the big moral issues of our day because St.

Paul never said anything about it in his epistles? No, the church has got to say something. So now we can't just leave that up to Jesus.

It's a dereliction of our duty as the church to present the gospel to the world.

Got it, so you're saying, let's say on the topic of transgenderism, the Catholic church is the Pope makes the final decision.

I'm sorry I brought it up. No, no, and I don't want to explore transgenderism as the topic, but if they are discussing that topic, the way that the

Catholics would go about it is look to the Pope, whatever he say goes. But the way that the Orthodox would go about it would say, let's discuss this as a group and see what works for our church.

Actually, what the Catholics would do, and they're not so flippant and just say, oh, well, whatever the

Pope says. Yes, sir, and we do it. No, I mean, the Catholic church is huge. There's a billion of them.

I mean, they have universities around the world. They've got some of the smartest people in the world. I knew, personally, their chief medical ethicist for several years.

The guy was brilliant. So what the Catholic church will do is they will research the whole thing.

They'll get the best scientific information, the best medical and psychological minds. They'll also get the church's moral theologians.

They'll get the historians. They'll examine the theology, the morals, the psychology, the medics, who stuff the psychological impacts.

They'll look at everything. Then they will make a recommendation. And either some organization like the

National Council of Catholic Bishops in America, which is sort of the local gathering of all of the

American Catholic bishops, might issue a statement, or something might come out from Rome, or maybe one of the

Vatican departments because they have whole departments that just deal with moral issues.

Maybe something comes out from that department. So no, it's not just a, oh, they're all slaves to whatever the Pope had for breakfast.

It's really not as cut and dry, and it's really not as vulgar as some non -Catholics sometimes want to make it out to be.

He's never flippant. There has been exactly one infallible statement made since 1870 in the

Catholic Church. Okay, this is not, he doesn't get up every Sunday and issue infallible statements. That doesn't happen.

Got it. So when we look at dogmas and the really core of the Christian belief systems, what are the differences on where the

Orthodox Church stands versus the Catholic Church? And I'm only comparing it to the Catholic Church simply because they're so close in development.

Yeah, on dogmatic matters, we're probably about 95 % the same. Please remember the core tenets of Christianity were debated and worked out in the early centuries of the church when the church was still one.

So the Nicene Creed, like I say, apart from the fact that most Western Christians say that the

Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son, apart from that one little phrase, we all believe exactly the same creed.

We all believe that Mary is the mother of God. We all believe that Christ is one person in two natures without division, separation, admixture, confusion.

You know, we all, most of the dogmas are really the same. With that issue of,

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It won't cost you anything extra, and it keeps this channel going. Now, back to the show. Son, does that mean that you guys have a different view on the

Trinity? Okay, what is your view? That the Holy Spirit proceeds only from the

Father, because that's what Scripture says. The Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father, and the

Father will send him to you. So we believe that the Father begets the Son, and he aspirates, breathes out, there's not a good word in English, breathes the

Holy Spirit. And then the relationship between the Spirit and the Son is that the Holy Spirit abides upon the

Son. And that's the relationship between them. Okay, so if it was like a sandwich, it'd be like God on top, and then the

Holy Spirit, and then the Son below. See there, now it gets interesting, doesn't it? Because you just established a hierarchy among three equal persons, didn't you?

I did, but just visually. But see, that's where it gets so much fun for me.

But it gets really gnarly, you know? Because yeah, are all the persons equal?

They're all equally divine. Father, Son, and Spirit are all equally divine. But in Orthodoxy, we also hold there is simultaneously a hierarchy.

So one of the fathers on top, since he is the source, the archi, the origin of the

Son and the Spirit, but they're all equal. So one of the peculiarities of Orthodox thought that gets played up and sort of makes everybody else go, what are you doing?

Is that we really do, Orthodoxy is much more comfortable with ambiguity than most other confessions are.

So we can say that the Holy Trinity is perfectly equal and has a full hierarchy within itself, perfectly contradictory terms, and we're 100 % cool with that.

Cool. No, but it works out in the same, and it comes from our understanding of the person of Christ.

He's fully God and fully human. How can we do that? Okay, well, what is the church?

Oh, the church is holy. Ah, the church is full of sinners. 100 % holy, 100 % sinners, one church.

Bread and wine of the Eucharist, 100 % body and blood of Christ, 100 % bread of wine, one sacramental reality.

Okay. The math is weird, but it works everywhere, and it starts turning up.

And that's one of the fun parts about Orthodoxy is because everything is so interrelated, and there is a lot that is very symbolic and archetypal.

You begin to notice the patterns, and when you begin to see the patterns working here, there, and all the way through, it becomes really very exciting, especially if you can discover a new one along the way and say, ah.

I think it was C .S. Lewis who said that God has a certain family style, and when you kind of catch on to what he's doing, you begin to just, it turns up everywhere, and it's really kind of fun to see.

Okay, so it sounds like the differences between Catholicism and Orthodoxy are really just from some beliefs, some structures, and some,

I wanna say, like, sacraments, but at the end of the day, they're quite similar. No, the sacraments are pretty much identical.

Oh, okay. Sacraments are identical, yeah. We have all seven that they do. A few of us in the

Orthodox world would argue that we actually have several more sacraments besides the traditional seven, but that's because some of us, and there are a couple of 20th century

Orthodox theologians who basically said, look, everything the church does is sacramental, so why do you want to restrict it to just seven?

Okay, so what would you say is the main difference, just to keep it super simple for somebody that's maybe at a crossroads and they don't know which way to go?

Church organization, Catholicism is, you know, is papal -centered or pope -centered.

Orthodoxy is conciliar. Got it. We have the same sacraments. We have 95 % the same doctrines, dogmas.

There's just very few, very few that, you know, that differ, and in this respect, we will, the

Orthodox will claim that the Catholics added stuff to the faith, and that's their mistake, and that the

Protestants took a whole lot out, and that's their mistake. I was just about to say, if we introduce the

Protestants, where does that, where do those differences come in? Yeah, exactly there, because the

Protestants reacting to Catholicism are basically a reactionary in their thinking and in their practices, so.

Okay. Which is why I also say, you know, Orthodoxy, like Catholicism, are pre -denominational.

You know, we don't get to be lumped in with a bunch of Protestant churches. Okay, so you would say that Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestant, they're all three very different things, and when we get into denominations, most of those stem from Protestant.

They all stem from Protestants. Okay. They are Protestants. That's great to know. That's the thing.

They are Protestants. Okay, okay. So if, and so, if I'm not very, in Catholicism, one and the same.

Over time, split apart. Uh -huh. You know, I'm not gonna lay blame one side or the other. There's enough to go around.

But, say if this is a Catholic thing, then out of the Catholics came the Reformations. Luther's, Calvin's, the

English Reformation, and then from then, the multitude of Protestant denominations, sects, parachurch organizations, and whatnot.

Oh, so Protestantism came out of the Reformation from Catholic, and then

Orthodoxy never changed, still traditional. Yeah, yeah. Well, partly, we were in like Russia, where not much changed, you know.

But also because, you know, we were partially under Mongol rule, and a lot of the Orthodox world was under Muslim occupation.

So, yeah, you know, the Middle, the churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople, Alexandria, the ancient

Middle Eastern churches, the whole Mediterranean basin, you know, was largely under Muslim occupation for centuries.

So, you know, they sort of, we sort of ossified a bit, to be perfectly honest.

But, you know, it kept us extremely conservative, but it also, and it kept us from interacting with the

Latin West a lot. Interesting. You know, but it also, it means in the

Orthodox East, there was no Enlightenment, there was no Reformation, and so the

Orthodox Church preserves to this day, what, ah, I'll probably get in trouble for saying this, but I'm gonna say it anyway, probably preserves kind of a pre -modern understanding of the world.

So it's much more iconic, or iconographic, or archetypal, if you will, to where it's not rationalistic.

We don't divide the world and say, oh, God is up in his heaven, and this is the material world down here. We kind of see everything as a theophany, everything is shot through with the presence of God.

Just why, you know, like you said at the beginning, why we have incense in the church, and all of the pretty icons, and why the music is so beautiful, because worship takes place physically in this world, and in all of our senses, because God is here, you know, tsunami bog,

God is with us, you know? You know, here and all around us and all, and he's not simply up in his heaven.

Is what you're referring to theosis? Theosis is our understanding of what salvation is.

The word literally means deification or divinization, and it goes back to a common understanding.

It was most clearly put by St. Athanasius the Great of Alexandria in his little book on the incarnation, chapter 53,

I happen to remember, where he says God was humanized, meaning in the incarnation of Christ, God was humanized that we might be divinized.

It's sometimes put more loosely, God became man that man might become

God, and our understanding of salvation is that we become by grace what

God is by nature. But we don't become

God, we become like God. We share in who God is. Okay. Yeah, without becoming

God. So can we share in God? Yeah, but without becoming the fourth person of the Trinity. Okay. Okay, again, let's hold two difficult ideas simultaneously in our minds.

You're right, right, right. I just, I know I would be quick in like my own sinful nature to be like, I am becoming

God, like same level playing field. Like, I don't even wanna go there, so I wanna clarify for anybody else. Because as you see in the case of Christ, again, why theology is important, because in the person of Jesus Christ, we have a divine person, the second person of the trinity, the logos of God is who took on human nature.

He remains God, but took on human nature. The parallel of the reverse of the complimentary part of that is our salvation, where we are human persons, but we take on the divine attributes.

We still remain fully human, but we get joined with God. And for that, an example of taking on those attributes as a human person would be like the fruits of the spirit or forgiving others.

Like, is it that the kind of thing you're talking about? Yeah, and like, more fully realizing like, if you will, all of the transcendent attributes of God, truth, beauty, goodness, being, order, life, to where we manifest all of those.

Okay. When we are able through the practices of the church and the asceticism of the church, the observances that have been developed over the centuries, and we're able to reduce the effect of sin in our lives and reduce the passions, and the passions are those abiding sins and bad habits and attitudes and all, you know, pride, anger, manglory, greed, lust, jealousy, all of that.

When those begin to calm down and no longer affect us, the light of God's grace just simply shines forth in us more clearly, and this is what we call holiness.

You know, the saints are those who have reached a degree of nearness to God to where, you know,

God's attributes kind of shine in their lives. So it's not like, you know, if, you know, if the saints are able to see into your heart, reveal your sins to you or whatnot, and we have those in the

Orthodox Church, it's not that they're doing something apart from God, it's that they're just so close to God that they see with his eyes.

You know, those who work miracles aren't doing something on their own, it's they're just so close to God, they act with God's power.

I mean, I've experienced this myself. My late spiritual father, who's dead 10 years this month,

Father Roman Braga, may we be worthy of his prayers. He was a Romanian monk. He was 11 years in communist prisons in Romania, including five years in solitary confinement.

He was beaten, he was forced to do slave labor, an incredibly harsh life.

And toward the end of his life, he became holy. And the last time I went to see him, he was quite elderly, he was 82, he was dying of prostate cancer.

And one of the sisters wheeled his wheelchair into the little chapel, and Father Roman just began talking, and he told me three stories from his life.

And at the end of those three stories, he says, Father Michael, I am tired. Ask the sister to take me back to my room.

Sure, Father. So called in the nun and she wheeled him back out. And I realized after he had gone, that with his three stories, he had answered the three questions

I wanted to ask him. And I never got to ask them. So I went to the abbess of the monastery,

I said, Mother Gabriella, Father Roman answered my questions before I could ask them. She said, oh, Father Michael, he's doing that with everybody nowadays.

No, but that was it. He had become holy. And he could see what I needed in my heart, and he spoke to my heart, because his was so pure.

I mean, this is what it means, this is theosis. And if that's not sanctity, I don't know what sanctity is in this world.

Okay, I guess, so speaking from the Protestant, like what I was raised in, I would call that the

Holy Spirit kind of indwelling within him and speaking to you. Are we saying the same thing? I think closely, yeah, probably.

If we don't tease it apart too much, then I'll probably find problems with it.

So let's just leave it there and we'll be okay. Okay, so one of the last things, and like kind of leading into this that I wanna go into is, how do we explore

Catholicism as a Protestant or Orthodoxy as a Protestant without, I wanna say like cheating on our beliefs?

Like, is there any dangers of like losing our faith by going from like more

Protestant beliefs that have a lot taken out to going into a more traditional Orthodox or vice versa, leaving

Orthodoxy and going into Protestantism? Can we, quote, lose our faith? Can we, I don't wanna say like, you know, commit blasphemy, but some sort of like sin, where does sin get introduced here that we should be aware of?

Okay, I'm gonna speak very much as an Orthodox priest here because, you know, this is, there are significant differences between Orthodoxy and the

Protestant world. All right, all of the confessions. As I said earlier, and somewhat in passing, you know, the

Protestant churches have abandoned and discarded a huge amount of the traditional practices and teachings of the ancient

Christian church. In that respect, I think that y 'all are somewhat diminished. That is not to say that people with, if you'll pardon me, a lot less of the truth sometimes do a hell of a lot more with it than those of us who may have a fuller tradition.

I have seen extraordinarily holy people in the Protestant world, and I have some very good friends that in some respects put me to shame.

On the other hand, though, to abandon the fullness of the church, the fullness of the truth, which is what we believe that we have, and to walk away from that is,

I think, extremely dangerous. You ask, can you lose your faith if you're a

Protestant visiting an unorthodox church? If by your faith you mean your relationship to Christ, certainly not.

Are you in danger of losing, I'm gonna be provocative here, are you in danger of losing some of the traditions of men that y 'all have introduced into the

Christian faith? Absolutely, because you will be exposed to what the church has been doing for 2 ,000 years.

I mean, we still sing at our evening service, we still sing a hymn that was composed about the year 150.

We've been singing it every day for 2 ,000 years. The church which the apostles founded, and like I say,

I can show historical continuity for these beliefs and practice. I'm baptizing seven people in just over a week.

The service, everything that I do is described by St. Carol of Jerusalem in the year 350.

We're still doing it the same way. And there are reasons for that, because it's meaningful and it has some validity there.

So, are you gonna lose your faith in Christ? No, I would hope that it would be strengthened.

Are you going to begin to question, perhaps, some of your Protestant beliefs?

And that, yeah, you probably will. What I would simply say, for those who are interested though, is come and see.

Come and see, and see if your heart is moved. And if it is, look a little deeper.

There's a richness here. On that note, let's say, I'm Protestant, but let's say I've never had a taste of the

Orthodox faith. Obviously, I've had 18 years of it at least, but if I'm gonna give it a taste, do

I have to fully convert? Or is there a middle ground where I can incorporate some

Orthodox teachings into my Protestant life? Or do I have to both feet in?

Or can I have one foot over here, one foot over there? Listen, okay, that's a very modern, very

Western, very American question. When you ask that, first, can you have one foot in both worlds?

No, not really. What do you do with the Sunday Eucharist? Is it just, oh, you know, is it the body and blood of Christ?

Or is it, oh, it's just a commemoration and an ordinance, and we do it quarterly because Jesus said so? What do you do with venerating an icon?

Oh, that's idolatry. Oh, no, this is making Christ present here. And the honor shown to the image passes to the prototype, as St.

Basil the Great puts it. Are you gonna have a priesthood? Are you gonna confess your sins?

Are you gonna look for absolution? Are you going to be obedient to feasting and fasting? Or are you gonna do your own thing?

And so what I hear in your question is, can I pick up pretty little bits of Orthodox culture, like prayer ropes or icons or nice incense, and bring them into my

Protestant home and use them as ways to enhance my own spirituality? You probably could, but the issue is that you're not really being obedient to Christ or his church.

First of all, you're picking and choosing things, which is a very American cafeteria -style

Christianity, and people are going to do it, and I know people will do that. Oh, that's good, cafeteria -style, wow, that's good.

No, it is. Oh, I like this, but I don't like that. I remember I visited some

Episcopalian churches. Actually, last summer, my wife and I were touring around England, Scotland, and Wales.

Every Anglican church in England had a Russian Orthodox icon in it, and they were like the only devotional pieces in the whole place.

After a while, frankly, I got a little resentful. What are they doing with our stuff? Wasn't that, what was that phrase?

Ooh, cultural appropriation. Why do you want an icon if you don't believe the way that the

Orthodox, why we create the icons, why we paint them, why they have a place, why they're placed in our churches in particular order and configurations, because they mean something, and so you're just taking something that is a devotional object for us and turning it into an ornament or a decoration for your home.

It kind of cheapens it, if I could say that. If you don't understand the whole understanding of the

Orthodox prayer of the heart, the Jesus prayer, and the depth of meaning behind that, oh, yeah, you could pick up an

Orthodox prayer rope and say whatever you want to with it or be super cool like some of the ortho bros are and wear one on your wrist so that you can -

Ortho bros. Show that you're really Orthodox. You can do that, but really, do you wanna go there?

Nah, I don't really think you do, so my personal preference is that you kind of leave our stuff alone.

We got really cool stuff. I mean, honest to God, we got really cool stuff, but I'm sorry it's ours.

Come and see, take the whole package so that it all makes sense and has its appropriate place and its appropriate valuation.

Otherwise, stay in your world and use the resources that you feel are appropriate, and don't scandalize your good evangelical friends when they come to your house and discover that you've got an icon of Christ and a candle burning in front of it and get accused of idolatry.

Got it, got it. You mentioned the icons, which I forgot to bring up earlier in the conversation, but just real quick,

I would agree that it's idolatry. How can I see it from your eyes? It's not idolatry.

First of all, like I quoted St. Basil before, the honor shown to the image passes to the prototype.

To honor an icon is to honor the person depicted in it, and Philip says to Christ, show us the

Father. He says, Philip, you've seen me, you've seen the Father, and we know that Christ himself is the incarnate logos of God, so God has a human face, and if he had a human face, we can depict it, and if you deny that we can depict it, then you fundamentally deny the reality that Christ came in the flesh, so it's sort of required.

We have to be able to paint a picture of God. Okay. That makes sense.

Thank you for explaining that. With other people depicted in icons, not just Jesus, what is the role of depicting other people that are not

Christ? Oh, because they are also saints and share in God's glory, and the church believes that they are saved.

That is, they are the great cloud of witnesses mentioned in the book of Hebrews. They are all of the saved, shown around the altar in heaven in the book of Revelation when

John goes up through those doors, and there are the martyrs under the altar, and all of the other figures standing up.

That's who we show in the icons, and they are our friends. They are alive in Christ, just like we are, and we can ask them to pray for us just like I can ask you to pray for me.

Got it, so there's no worship of them. No, absolutely not. No, and that's very clear.

It's much, it's harder in English because we don't have the clear language. In Greek, it's very, very clear.

Latria is worship. It's reserved exclusively for God. Froskinesis is veneration.

It's to hold an honor. We hold an honor, all of the saints, but we do not worship anybody but God. And do you feel like getting one of the martyrs to pray for you is better than having me pray for you?

Is that kind of the angle there? Possibly. I don't know the pool you have with our

Lord. Not as good as you. I don't know about that, but I mean, at least in the case of Mary, the mother of God, some of our prayers mention the line, pray for us because the prayers of a mother avail much to win the hearing of the master.

So, you know, he's going to listen to mom. Okay. And she is our greatest saint anyway.

You know, and even if you choose the first one to say yes to God, you know. I feel like you're clarifying so much for me right now.

And I really appreciate it. Thank you. I'm not trying to offend you at all. It's just, I know I'm being ignorant.

No, I'm not offended in the least. And when St. Paul says, for example, in his epistles where he talks about parrhesia, where he talks about having boldness before God.

Okay. We believe that the saints have this boldness. That's why their prayers are sought because we believe they're in heaven.

Therefore they stand in the divine presence. They've already passed, you know, through the passions of this life and all.

So they stand there, you know, in the divine presence and they have, because they are there, they have boldness before God that we, that I, in my sinfulness would never presume to have.

Oh, when you say boldness, you mean like they ask questions that we should be embarrassed to ask?

They can stand up there and ask for things that I should be ashamed, when I'm ashamed even to approach

God. Oh. The attitude of a Christian should be less, you remember the story of the publican and the

Pharisee? You know, it's one of the parables. In fact, there was this Pharisee. They both went to the temple.

The Pharisee stood proudly and said, I thank you, Lord, that I am not like other men. You know, I give tithes of everything.

I'm not even like that tax collector over there. And the tax collector stood way in the back, wouldn't even lift up his eyes to heaven, you know, but just simply beat his breast and said,

God have mercy on me, a sinner. Publican, the tax collector, went away justified.

The Pharisee did not. And so the Christian attitude towards prayer is that, you know, who am

I to approach my Lord? I approach in humility. And I ask for things, certainly, but do

I have boldness? I don't have any boldness before God. And it's almost a good thing that we don't have boldness because we should approach him with humility.

I think if you really knew that you were standing in the presence of God, you wouldn't be standing up there, chest out making demands.

Oh, I agree. I agree. Hit the dust, face on the ground, you know? Yep, yep.

And okay, so that's kind of the attitude we largely take in orthodoxy.

You know, I would not be naming and claiming it, you know, in any way. Okay. Okay, let's say somebody's listening to this and they're like,

I think I'm gonna give it a go. Where should they start? What should they expect? How should they approach learning more about orthodoxy without fully committing?

Yeah, no one, excuse me, fully commits up first. And the standard path nowadays is, of course, everybody goes to YouTube and starts looking on YouTube.

Our own services at my parish are broadcast live. We have a number of homebound people.

We started that during lockdown when we could only have a few people in church, but we continued it for the sake of the homebound.

So you can watch Orthodox services live on YouTube. There are a number of very good

Orthodox commentators and content providers who talk about the faith who are presenting information about it.

So find an entree of something that's interesting to you. If you're interested in icons, well, if you're interested in prayer, well, music, well, you know,

Orthodox interpretation of scripture and exegesis. Most of the fathers started as scripture commentators, you know, and there is huge collections of commentary by the fathers, increasingly translated into English.

Start where it interests you. And then, but the problem that some people make is that they come to it from an intellectual perspective.

Oh, I can study this. I can read about this. Therefore, I know what Orthodoxy is. Uh -uh, it is impossible to get it out of a book.

Orthodoxy is life. It is a lived experience. And so that's why I said earlier, you need to come and see.

So just find a church near you. You might wanna call ahead. See, like in your case, you found a very ethnic church that still worshiped in Slavonic and did not worship in English.

There are churches that only worship in Greek or in Arabic or Romanian or Serbian because they're tending to an immigrant population and need to do that.

But increasingly in America, there are all English congregations, like mine happens to be.

Find an English language congregation and just go and see. Just attend a service. Is there something that they should prepare for?

Like they have to wear the head covering. They should prepare to stand the whole time. Anything they should know up front? Not every church.

I mean, only some of the stricter Russian Ukrainian churches are without pews or chairs.

Most people, most churches nowadays have some seating in them so you can sit down a bit. Some in the

Russian tradition and very conservative churches might ask you to cover your head, in which case women to cover their heads.

So they'll probably have some scarves in the back if you don't bring one. I'm rather fond of that, but it's not a hill

I'm gonna die on and requiring it of my women. But oddly enough, it's the older women from the old country who cover their heads and the young women converts who are doing it because they want some way to mark the fact that they're

Christian women, that they're Orthodox women and they're standing in the presence of their Lord and they find it a meaningful thing to do, which surprised me no end.

But there are a number of them doing that. And so they're sort of finding a way of expressing their identity in the way that they dress.

So is the veiling just like a symbolism for what they're proclaiming with their faith or is it like a,

I wanna say like a representation of modesty? Both. Oh, okay.

Both. And I mean, there are, you know, St. Paul says that women should have their heads covered.

Like I say, I'm not dying on that hill. You know, actually most women,

Christian women cover their heads in church until the early 1960s. You watch old movies, old black and white movies where there's a scene in a church, all the women have hats on.

Yeah. You know, it's sort of a cultural thing. It just, people quit wearing hats. Women quit wearing gloves too, you know, it's, so.

Bring back, bring back that style. I have two final questions for you. I've already taken so much of your time, but number one, what's the most important thing someone should understand about orthodoxy?

Oh, that's a really loaded question. I know. I don't like it when people do this to me, but you're really smart, so you probably have a great answer.

I'd have to have a long sentence. I couldn't do it in 25 words or less, but it would somehow involve that this is the church which

Christ founded. In it is true life. Everything that the Orthodox Church does and teaches and offers to us is designed to bring us into a closer union with God, to cure our souls and to heal our souls.

And as one of our services says, yeah, it is the ark and in her is true salvation.

And it is possible to work out your salvation in the Orthodox Church. Wow. Okay, last question.

I'm sorry, as soon as I said it, I don't like it, but that'll do for now. You can go again. This isn't live.

You can go again. No, that was really good and really straightforward. I feel like it isolates why we believe what we believe.

So I appreciate that. The last one is what's a misconception about the Orthodox Church that you wanna clarify?

Misconception about the Orthodox Church that we're somehow something alien and foreign or that you have to be

Greek or Russian or Romanian to be Orthodox. That's good.

You don't. It's the church which Christ founded. And America is an immigrant country by and large.

So people who came from Orthodox countries brought their faith with them. And that's why we have some ethnic labels, but it's open to everybody.

I'm a native Texan. Ethnically, my people are French, Irish, and Native American.

And if they'll take me and ordain me a priest, they'll take anybody. So maybe the dirty little secret is is that Orthodoxy is a little promiscuous that way.

I mean, they'll take just about anybody. But yeah, I think that's probably the misconception because I get it all the time.

What are you? I'm Orthodox. Russian? No, I'm a Texan. And it's like,

Texan? How could you be Texan? You have to be a Greek or a Russian. No, we don't fit in the little box.

Okay, I don't fit in the little box. That's very refreshing. But I think that's it. Yeah, you don't have to be some foreign ethnicity to be

Orthodox. You just have to love Christ and to want to save your soul. And the church is, you know,

Orthodoxy, I mean, maybe the last comment I'll say is that, you know, if you're ill and you know your heart is ill, you know, do you want the

Cleveland Clinic or do you want the dock in the box? You know, with the little walk -in clinic down there.

I know the state of my heart and I want the Cleveland Clinic and that's kind of what the

Orthodox Church is. Wow. In the scheme of things. So, you know, if you're okay where you are,

God bless you and strengthen you in that. If you're looking for more, then at least give us a try.

Yeah, that's fair. And like you say, come and see. Come and see. Yeah, and how can people connect with you?

And not just your church, but also your business, Empowering Men. I want to hear about both if people want to get involved with you.

Okay, yeah, if you want to like watch our services and maybe hear my adult ed class or hear me preach, my church is

Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church in Livonia, Michigan. And I think if you put in Holy Transfiguration Livonia in YouTube, you can find us.

It's fairly easy. And I do have a little side work. Again, as I said earlier, there's all of these young men coming into the church, which is dealing with them has opened my ministry up.

And now I do a lot of stuff that's sort of adjacent to the church in men's work where I have a

Christian component to it, but it's largely I speak to a non -Christian or it's more of a secular setting where I do a lot of my men's work.

I have a handle on social media, which is Average to Alpha. That's A -V -G, numeral two, alpha.

And you can find me on mostly Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and God help me,

TikTok. But my business coach told me I had to be on TikTok. So I said, yes, sir, and there I am.

I feel the same way. I feel the same way. But Average to Alpha is like counseling sessions. Is it a course?

Actually, it's a social media presence. What I'm doing now, forgive me, at the moment, my website died a great death and I'm having to rebuild it.

So it's a little hard to get in touch with me. People can DM me on Instagram, but ultimately what

I'll be doing is I do offer, I have very limited time, but I do some one -on -one coaching for men. I have an online course,

Forging Your Future, where I help younger men to grow into greater maturity.

And it's called, what is it? Oh, good heavens. Yes, like getting out of late adolescence into early, quarter -life crisis.

That's the, I'm sorry, that's the first. A lot of young guys in quarter -life crisis, who aren't 15 years of smoking weed and playing video games and jerking off to porn are not the best preparation for life.

And when they kind of get past all of that and realize they're not having good relationships with women, they don't have bring anything to the table, they don't like where their lives are going and they're ready to grow up.

That's where I am. That's where I come in. That's the population that my heart goes out to.

So I've developed a course. I will probably have a small online Christian men's community in the near future.

I do occasional retreats at my parish. I hope to do a lot more retreat work conferences and workshops in the future.

We will see how my plans for retirement go before I can make any promises about that.

Yeah, wow, so much. Well, thank you so much for your time today. This has opened my eyes to the world of orthodoxy that I've already been a part of, but now more interested to explore and comfortable to explore.

So thank you so much for answering my questions. You are always welcome back. And for everybody listening, thank you,

Father Michael. Very good. Thank you so much. I'd be pleased to be back if your audience finds some interest or maybe has specific questions.

And if I could end with one comment, I know I get a little vehement sometimes in my answers.

I didn't come here to be offensive. And I hope that in nothing that I said, I caused offense.

Forgive me if I did. It was not my intention. I just love my faith and I get excited about sharing it.

So forgive me if I crossed the line somewhere. God bless you. We'll chat soon.