I’m still a Roman Catholic, but I have the advantage on Dreher of having been one since birth. Reading Dreher’s accounts of what moved him to the orthodox, I’m struck by the naivete of his trust of Cardinal Law and the related sense of betrayal when he found out just what a scum Law seems to be. I think any cradle Catholic of whatever ideological persuasion would have seen Law as the kind of guy that just raises one red flag after another, and I don’t think Dreher was equipped to do that. This isn’t ideological—the “liberal” Roger Mahony raises the same red flags for me, and the “conservative” John O’Connor didn’t. When Law left Boston, I was rather amazed that the papers (we can’t, of course, assume their objectivity) printed rather impressive tributes from Orthodox, Episcopal, and Jewish spokespeople and didn’t seem to find a Catholic with a good word for him.

As to the Russian Orthodox, I’m not sure that the memory of notes to translations of 19th century novels is really a good way to judge that faith tradition. While I personally had a very bad impression of the at least Greek Orthodoxy based on the attitudes of my contemporaries who had grown up in that church, I do note that both Benedict XVI and Rowan Williams, both of whom are massively learned and neither of whom can fairly be called anti-intellectual, have praised the theological work of the Russian Orthodox in the 20th century. And the one time I actually visited a Russian Orthodox church I found the people there both exotic and welcoming in an appealing way—although it was a little unnerving eating lunch with a portrait of the Tsar looking at me.

What “we” is it that can compare its life now to what its life was like pre-1940?
What thing is that?
I’m gettin old but I wasn’t born then.
Is it some general air that was received then, that we know about, that got worse, and now is bad?
Some of us are worse off, some better, and thinking in these general terms, as if what we are is an average of all of us at any given moment, may be one of the main drivers of that erosive phenomenon.
Individuality has definitely declined on all fronts. You know?
Sometimes I ride my bike into town with that particular Rosetta Tharpe piece on constant repeat, other times with the Pogues’ If I Should Fall From Grace With God.
Of course at one point I had to recognize the thread in the subject matter, but I chose them as music and the way they speak to me, which is far and away from the literal.
Rosetta and Christopher Smart and William Blake and a whole army of valiant individuals, including that toothless gin-sot McGowan, still testifying, thanks to the wonders of print and text and libraries and the internet and portable recorded music technology.
But testifying to what?
Something that we are, I think. Something that we are that we need to preserve even when we can’t delineate it and define it into reproducible code. Especially at a moment like this, when it’s so easily dissolved by cynical reason.
So yeah, Rosetta Sharpe.
And check out Inez Andrews, with the Caravans, singing (Hold To) God’s Unchanging Hand – Jan 3, 1961.
Or in that Eastern mode – The Sirin Vocal Ensemble, a Russian sacred music group, The Sinful Soul Laments.

That’s all. Well, well, well, well, that’s all.

Well, duh.

the syrian church sounds good. probably a lot of good beards.

Unfortunately, I think it might be. We have become much more publicly accepting of the darker elements in ourselves and much less idealistic since then. There were many things wrong, but we were more ashamed when they were exposed. The U.S. in 1940 was poised for the greatest expansion in economic opportunity and civil rights the nation had ever seen.

It would make sense for such a person to go to Russian Orthodoxy since that’s a pretty reason-hating group of people, sort of like Catholicism with all the good parts of it taken out. (Universities, helping the poor, hospitals, seeking social justice, etc.)

Heh. Indeed.

[googling] is Eben his dad? interesting!

I’d write more, but I have to go to church now.

I like Sister Rosetta Tharpe too, but this is not an accurate thing to say about the pre-WWII Southern U.S.