Eastern Orthodox Christianity 2.0

Christ is Risen!  Indeed He is Risen!
Yes, on the Third Monday of Pascha yesterday morning - May 12 (NS)! - some snow stuck to the ground in higher elevations of southwestern Pennsylvania (link may break), the Commonwealth where I and alot of other Orthodox live!
This discussion goes back to my recent post occasioned by the (Western) Good [...]

The main meaning of the Greek verb baptizo, from which the English word baptism is ultimately derived (as Mr. Portokalos advised us!), is to dip, as in water.
Christianity as such didn’t invent the practice of dipping converts in water.  The Old Testament Church sometimes baptized proselytes, and so did some other Near Eastern religions.  But dipping [...]

Italy’s former Orthodoxy is attested by the ancient icons and Greek icon-style murals and mosaics to be found in many old Latin churches there to this day.  Rome itself has at least one icon said to have been painted by St. Luke the Evangelist (like a few in Orthodox hands, or rather, graced to Orthodox [...]

OK, OK, now that we’ve all had a laugh over a Vatican bureaucrat-archbishop’s politically-correct-sounding interview, first things first: what he was really about (Latin perspective).  For further background, from other sources on the WWW, I gather that what he was doing in the first place was providing advice to priest-confessors / spiritual directors in the [...]

A knowledgeable, intelligent working-class layperson I know in the Latin Church, even a product of parochial schools, even arguably in the Latin Church’s most conservative jurisdiction, who hasn’t been to Mass much since it was translated into English, was shocked to learn that her Church teaches that God’s Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son, [...]

(Opinion Alert: Just a few ruminations.) 
Was it an accident that Rome and Constantinople’s break in communion of 1054 became permanent?  Like I’ve said, there were previous ones.  Doctrinal divergence?  Even this hadn’t prevented patching-up differences previously.  And between 1054 and 1453 there were several attempts to do so again.  The last one actually resulted in [...]

The blogger from the previous post, Mr. Brooks Lampe in the Washington, DC, area, here tackles some heavy stuff, without it coming across too heavy! He’s reporting and reflecting mostly on a book by Philip Sherrard, whose writing can be extremely dense - well-planned, well-packed, making for downright oppressive reading, like much philosophy can be [...]

(Polished and expanded a little on 18 January 2008.)
How can Orthodoxy possibly dovetail with liberal Roman Catholicism?

Collegiality and conciliarity; no Papal Infallibility. While the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has some very supportive supporters, he’s really not supposed to be a worldwide ecclesiastical autocrat, merely “first among equals” among the bishops of the Orthodox Church, permanent [...]

Yesterday was the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, the Apostles. The Gospel reading for Divine Liturgy was Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi, Matthew 16:13-19 (here, from the NAB).
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When Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
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They replied, “Some say [...]