Only back temporarily. Then gone for good. This is the only monastery I have been at with cell reception. I still have been using my phone to coordinate travel arrangements and talk to my councils. I am eager to finally be able to put it down. Since I am about to become a novice, that time is soon. I figure I could at least share here some before then. Being in monasteries this whole time has helped me to mature pretty quickly. A healthy monastery is a good place for healing. Maybe polemics isn't the best thing for me to go off with, but Hopefully it will be edifying.
The Orthodox Catholic Church is not a denomination. The creed professes One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. That being the case, a denomination is by definition not catholic. A denomination is by definition a division. Catholic means whole, complete, without division. A schism doesn't divide the church. Schismatics leave the church. The church is unharmed.
If you read what the ancient church fathers write about what the church looks like and how it operates on Earth, the only church that even resembles this is one church. Protestants don't even have the same understanding of salvation as the historical church. They don't have the same understanding of grace. Why, protestants don't even have apostolic succession, something the ancient church pointed to as onenof the identifying marks of the church. Where are the bishops? Where are the priests? Even the denominations that have them lack apostolic authority. Even the form of worship is alien to the ancient church. How many of these churches even have altars? How is it that when one reads the canons of the ecumenical councils, it becomes clear that no protestant church meets even the basic qualifications to be considered a church?
The fact of the matter is, protestants are playing pretend church. Most of my life was spent in protestant/evangelical Christian world. I am familiar with it. You are not familiar with Orthodox Christianity. After tasting the real thing, I could never go back. It is not possible for you to understand what you are missing, because you don't have the real thing to compare what you have to.
You say it matters little that people know next to nothing about early Christianity, but this is a ridiculous thing to say. It is important because it destroys the protestant narrative and makes it clearer that the way the ancient church fathers understood the church is in line with how we, The Orthodox Catholic Church do. Why is that? Because it is the same church.
The Orthodox Church did not break away from the Roman Church. It wasn't that we couldn't live in peace because we couldn't reconcile in Christ. You don't know the history behind what happened. Why am I Orthodox instead of Roman Catholic? Because when I started to serious study church history on my own it became clear that what I was taught beforehand was wrong. Rome was unambigiously on the wrong side of the issue, and they were the ones who broke away from the church. This happened because even back then they were heretics. After the schism, the rate at which they innovated only accelerated.
I suggest you listen to the playlist in the OP as the first part of it shows how quickly Roman Catholicism deviated from the common piety of the church of the first millenium.
Luther was a heretic who violated his vows of monasticism, married a nun, made corrupt translations that altered what scripture said in order to back his bad theology, and if he were alive today to see the state of the church that bears his name, he would be LIVID. His only saving grace is that he was right about one thing... Roman Catholicism had slid into heresy. That is why they aren't Orthodox! John Calvin is even worse, he was a monster who believed in a monster God!
The Orthodox Church does not reject the authority of scriptures, in fact, we read a great deal more bible in our church than any protestant church I have ever been to. We are supposed to read the bible every day. If you read a pamphlet on confession, not reading the bible everyday is even something to confess! The monks at the monastery I am at now are required to at least a chapter of the New Testament a day, not including what is read in church. In the course of a week, we go through the entire book of psalms in church. The bible was also compiled by us. If it wasn't for The Orthodox Church, you would not have a bible.
The Protestant Churches do not all agree on things. Such an opinion only comes from a lack of attention to detail. They can't even agree on fundamental things like the nature of the eucharist, or whether we have free will or not. The one thing they have in common? They are all heterodox, and none of them is the historical church.
You are correct in identifying this humanistic spirit. You are also correct that a longing for classical age of past helped fuel this. What you don't see is that all of this resulted from the deviations that the Latin church had made from Orthodoxy. An over reliance on reason and romanticism. All of this is shown and traced through the playlist I posted in the OP.
Where did the anti-Christianity come from? Eventually reason and romanticism detached itself from the heretical form of Christianity that held it back, eventually even rejected God. Anti-Christianity in the modern sense comes from an apostasy from Christianity. The seeds of this apostasy were sown in the forms of Christianity that these currents ultimately ended up rejecting. The playlist I posted goes through the history of this very well.
The Orthodox Church is easily the most conservative church there is, we still practice a liturgy that is well over a millenium and a half years old. Have you ever been to an Orthodox Church? There is absolutely no adapting to the modern age, rather, the modern age has produced more martyrs of the church than all of the rest of history combined. To add insult to injury, protestants not only aren't with the chirch but arrogantly try to prosletyze us like to count our martyrs and slain as their own. Yet secretely they hate us. The proof is in how many converts have been disowned by their friends and families simply for becoming Orthodox. Even I have been through this! It is very common. I lost almost all my old church friends. Not even for anything I have done. My brother has disowned me. For what? Because they all hate Orthodoxy. It is not unlike those people who say, "I have no problem with such and such lifestyle", but as soon as their child gets into it, oh no!
Considering The Orthodox Church all but did away with the polytheism of the ancient world, having cast out the demons of ancient Egyptian and Greek religion, your claim that we are polytheists is laughably stupid. We are not polytheists. This is a ridiculous and ignorant claim. Christians were accused of being atheists, and were slain for it. Who accuses us of being polytheists? Muslims. Why do they do this? Because they in their ignorance take our Trinity as being 3 Gods. The Church fathers write quite a bit about how this is a mistaken belief, even before the rise of Islam.
The Orthodox Church is the church that remembers, honors, and studies the church fathers. We know what the early church taught because we are that same church! The oldest protestant church hasn't even been around but for a few hundred years. They have no memory of history. They in vain try to reconstruct the church from the crumbs that manage to fall of the church's table. Not only is what they do vain and impossible, but they in turn end up being used as a tool for Satan to act as a stumbling block for those who would otherwise find The Church. Protestants are the reason we have atheists in the modern age. Listen to the playlist! It shows a very clear tragectory that is the natural consequence of western Christianity's deviation from the true faith. Everything about what is going on today could have been predicted at the time of the schism, because there is a natural path these things take!
Now look, Nihilism has overtaken the world, and where are it's roots? The apostasy of western man from Christianity caused by an over reliance on reason, frivilous romanticism, and PRIDE.
Where do you get this idea that Orthodoxy connects with the modern masses? Ours is the only viable worldview that stands in opposition to modernism.
Why are you offended at how we interpret the bible? You can find typological interpretation of the Old Testament even in the new. The interpretations we have for the bible come from the ancient church. This is how they interpreted the bible. Oh, not exclusively. But you don't really know how we use scripture, because you are not Orthodox. Neither have you ever been catechuminized. If you get your information from heretics, do you really think it is possible for you to come to truth? Of course not.
Who is the head of The Orthodox Catholic Church? Jesus Christ. Why is it that the Roman Catholic Church is in heresy? Because they made the bishop of Rome head of the church! If you read the writings from the time of the schism, this is one of the reasons why the schism happened!
Protestants? They aren't in the church, therefore the head of their faith isn't Christ. One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. Make no mistake, we do not share the same faith. Protestants don't even share faith. It is a house divided against itself. Look at those churches who pray with Muslims, who embrace sodomy, who think worship is throwing a rock concert, who have disgarded the altar for a pulpit. A total mockery of real Christianity. You share faith with these people? Protestants don't even know how to pray. There are some who babble in gibberish and call it speaking in tounges. Like some atheist's parody of my faith!
When you protestants debate atheists, you use the same reasonings your ancestors used that created modern atheism in the first place! These atheists can't tell the difference between real Christianity and heresy. To them, heterodox and orthodox are the same.
