Stoopids (being the closest thing to a retraction)

What’s worse: thinking, “I know better” or thinking, “I used to think that I knew better, but I actually do now”? Or are both the same?

I’ve been reading some online stuff by other converts to Orthodoxy, and the tone is always the same: “I’ve read such-and-such books and I’m quite well-informed about whatever it is that I’m now writing about, and although I’m a young convert I have faith in the Church, live as a monk in the city and start all my spiritual conversations with, ‘My spiritual father told me…’ or, ‘The Fathers say….’”  That, when they’re not gushing about how old icons are, how long (“holier?”) our services are, or how uncompromising the Church has been on moral issues. All of it irritated me very much.

One of the most sobering rebukes ever given me was, “You hate most the faults that you find in yourself.”

Zing.

Several years ago, I gave a talk on the Eucharist, relating it to how and why I became Catholic, delivering it with the kind of hubris of which only a sophomore is capable. Most Catholics, I said, don’t know how central the Eucharist is or what a great gift it is blah blah blah. After that, a good (and honest) friend who had been raised Catholic came up to me and said, “But who are you to tell these people who’ve been Catholic all their lives what they should or shouldn’t do?” It shook me up a bit, because I was more used to praise along the lines of, “Isn’t it great that you’re a convert and can show us poor cradle Catholics the treasures of our own faith?”

But you know, the suspicion that she was somehow right has never left me. These past few days I’ve been slowly sinking into the realization that the very things that bother me about my fellow converts to Orthodoxy are my own flaws. It’s akin to spitting on an image that one later realizes is one’s own reflection in the mirror. In the short time that I’ve been Orthodox, I’ve repeated most, if not all, of the significant mistakes I made as a Catholic convert of 12 years, both on this blog and elsewhere.

At first I thought about deleting all the posts and comments that bear witness to my rashness (like the ones on Christology, the papacy, etc.)—maybe even the whole blog—, since in blogdom it is actually possible to recant nearly all that one has said without publishing a book of retractions. Erase that past (or at least most of it) and move on.

But then I thought, “Maybe that’s not what this is supposed to be about. Maybe it’s about leaving your faults to be seen by the public but actually apologizing for them.” I decided to listen to that voice, which I hope is not that of the Devil himself.

So, the bottom line is this. Readers, forgive me. I have written far more than my real knowledge warrants, and I have only myself to blame for my misguided zeal.

As for my posts, both after and before my reception into the Orthodox Church, they will remain here for all to read as monuments of my weakness as a Christian. I hope that whoever reads this blog will always be able to take whatever resembles wheat and leave the chaff behind.

I remember a story told by Fr. Benedict Groeschel (not my spiritual father—get it?), in which an event he had been planning turned out to be a complete failure.

He told Mother Teresa of Calcutta afterwards, “I feel so humiliated.”

“That’s not so bad,” she told him, “humiliation usually comes before humility.”

I hope she’s right on that one.

That said, I resume, and hopefully by a different way.