Why I Became Catholic and not Orthodox

by Professor ROBERT MOORE-JUMONVILLE

In 2019, at the Easter Vigil, I was received into the Catholic Church. My decision came as a surprise to some, though those who knew me well saw my confirmation as the culmination of years of deliberation.

Let me add some context. For 33 years, I had served as an elder in the United Methodist Church and 21 of those years as a pastor in rural Midwestern parishes. In addition, for almost 30 years I have taught theology, Christian history, and spiritual formation at two evangelical universities, and I earned my doctorate in a program titled “The History of Christianity in the West.” For years, I considered joining the Orthodox Church, but in the end, I decided against it. It might be constructive to reflect on the factors that spurred my decision.

My first real exposure to Orthodoxy occurred about 20 years ago, when two of my Protestant clergy friends drew me into reading Orthodox theology. We had all been pondering the validity of Protestant sacraments. And what is there not to love about Orthodox theology—its history and its mystery? The Eastern Church lives comfortably with theological paradoxes and puzzles, whereas the Catholic Church tends to parse every theological nuance. That difference in theological temperament between East and West can be observed as far back as the 3rd century — for instance, if we compare Origen with Tertullian. In these past two decades, my library has become stuffed with Orthodox books by Athanasius, Chrysostom, Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa, Symeon the New Theologian, Kallistos Ware, John Meyendorff, Lev Gillet, Andrew Louth, Vladimir Lossky, Olivier Clément, as well as the Philokalia, scores of books on the Jesus Prayer, and much more.

Those familiar with Orthodox thought realize how seamlessly it blends doctrinal and formational theology. “There is no intellectual means of entering into the Gospel, for the Gospel is spiritual,” wrote the Coptic monk Matthew the Poor, who died in 2006. “It must be obeyed and lived through the Spirit before it can be understood.” Because I have taught spiritual formation for much of my career, this transformational understanding of the Christian life has always attracted me.

Though I could continue my list of aspects of Orthodoxy that I appreciate, let me mention one last quality, the one I imagine most often draws in young people today: Orthodox liturgy. Around 2003, I joined a group of like-minded Protestants who longed to experience liturgical worship. We began a Saturday-evening service in a side chapel of a large Free Methodist Church using The Book of Common Prayer. It was “high church,” chockfull of vestments, incense, and icons. The weekly services continued for two-and-a-half years, obviously meeting a deep spiritual need for people, with perhaps 30 souls in attendance at the height. Even during this experience of liturgical worship, however, several of us began wondering uneasily if we weren’t merely “playing at church.” Where was the Apostolic succession? Where was the larger Body of Christ to which we were tied, to which we were connected both geographically and historically?

Right about this time, I attended the Orthodox baptism of a former student’s son. I recall how everything that occurred was full of meaning. The godparents spitting at the devil during the exorcism, the child being dunked three times, the priest taking the baby behind the iconostasis and then bringing the child to the foot of the altar for the parents to pick up. Even to write this brings tears to my eyes. I left the service enthralled by its beauty and depth while, at the same time, realizing Protestants could never simply extract a piece of the liturgy from here or there with the intent of sewing the old cloth on a new garment (Matthew 9:16). The liturgy was all of one piece. Any part isolated from the whole would lose integrity and meaning. The richness of my experiences with Orthodoxy further highlighted the relative poverty of my UM tradition, and for that, I am deeply indebted to Orthodoxy, even though I found my home in Roman Catholicism. I love all this about Orthodoxy, yet I became Catholic.

The simplest reason for my choice was this: because my family did. Ten of us in my family (all former Protestants) now have received confirmation. The first was my nephew, Cameron, who had attended the liturgical services with us while he was in college. In my immediate family, my daughter, Annesley, went first (while attending a Protestant college), and then my wife, Kimberly, who teaches alongside me at the same university.

The Exchange of Crosses

(1956, detail) Fritz Eichenberg

Catholicism felt more structured, but also more natural to me than Orthodoxy.

I also came to realize that I felt more at home in the West than in the East. Of course, many thoroughgoing Westerners today identify instead with Eastern Orthodoxy, so I must elaborate. Much of my academic study has been in Western history—yes, beginning with the ancient Greeks (in the East), but moving quickly to Rome, medieval Western civilization, England, and America. The West (Catholicism) speaks my language. Part of my preference relates to liturgy. Since my junior year in college, I have frequently attended Episcopal worship. Anglicans knew English, of course, and often they wrote like poets. Catholics, in fact, have not been as nimble— either in their hymnody, or in their translations of the Bible into English, or in their English liturgy. But along the spectrum from low-church Protestant, to Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox, I experience Orthodox worship as most foreign, as strangest and most difficult. Much of

Catholics historically, at least in the past 500 years, have invested more than Orthodox in evangelism, world missions, work with the poor, and issues of social justice.

Orthodox liturgy—its fast pace and repetitions—leaves me feeling like I am lost in a foreign country.

In my mind, a marked difference exists between the Orthodox intent to not change liturgy and the age-old Catholic practice of translating the Gospel into the next “host culture.” The matter of translating the Gospel for a new culture has been a perennial challenge for the Church. So, when a priest near us claims that the Orthodox have never changed their liturgy, I have to scratch my head. As a historian, I doubt that is accurate. But again, this basic difference between Orthodox and Catholic, at the cultural level, has stood since the early years of Christian history— beginning much earlier than the formal schism of 1054. The Catholic theologian Hans Küng gave a lecture I once heard depicting certain “church groups” as having “gotten off the cultural timeline bus” at some century in history (my paraphrase of Küng). So, for instance, Protestant Holiness churches got off the bus in mid-19th century America when revivalism flourished across the country. Catholics got off the bus in the Middle Ages in western Europe. The Orthodox got off the bus, according to Küng, somewhere during the Byzantine Empire. I have visited Egypt and Turkey. I prefer France and Switzerland. Although Catholic liturgy did appear mainly in Latin before Vatican II, I still think that experiencing a Tridentine Catholic mass of 1920 would feel more comfortable to me than the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. I admit I am speaking merely of a matter of aesthetic preference, especially as that relates to the experience of worship. But what also inspires me is the art and literature of the West: Fra Angelico’s frescoes; Gothic architecture; the works of Augustine, Dante, Chesterton, and Henri Nouwen; and all that Western inheritance which flows from the fountainhead of Catholicism.

Many Catholic practices drew me to the West as well, perhaps again because they felt more systematic or programmatic than what I witnessed in Orthodoxy. The Ignatian Exercises, given either over an eight-day retreat or spread out over several months, and the daily Prayer of Exam both serve as examples of what I mean. Catholicism felt more structured, but also more natural to me than Orthodoxy.

Finally, let me broaden my category once more to include more universal aspects I think Catholicism offers — features I do not find in Orthodoxy. First, the Catholic Church simply has a larger presence across the globe, and thus at least appears more catholic (read: universal). In addition, Catholic parishes seem more open to newcomers, more friendly, than Orthodox congregations, and quicker to catechize. Because my experience of Orthodoxy is limited primarily to one congregation and a half-dozen visits elsewhere, you should take what I am saying here provisionally. But Orthodox folk appear more closed than open to me— as though they are part of an exclusive club. Orthodox friends of mine worry about this, too, and work against their tribalism. Certainly, Catholic parishes can be experienced as clannish, as well, though Vatican II opened many doors. Theologically, Catholics are more willingly admit Orthodox believers as equals (seeing East and West as “two lungs of the same body”).

Regarding being open “to the other,” Catholics historically, at least in the past 500 years, have invested more than the Orthodox in evangelism, world missions, work with the poor, and issues of social justice. Those endeavors are all important to me. Since the Middle Ages, Catholics have also tended to challenge corrupt political institutions more directly than the Orthodox. In contrast to Catholic engagement with the world, one may argue that the Orthodox know better how to pursue the contemplative and mystical side of theology—a vision that focuses on the spirit within rather than on the world outside.

In the end, please accept this as merely my story — less theology than autobiography. In the words of G. K. Chesterton (in the preface to his famous book Orthodoxy): I have “been forced to be egotistical in order to be sincere.” Recognize as well that Orthodox theology and my many Orthodox friends continue to influence my Catholic faith. For despite real differences, when compared with the wider culture, Orthodoxy and Catholicism share much in common, both offering our lost world an order of life and worship.

DR. ROBERT MOORE-JUMONVILLE teaches in the Department of Theology at Spring Arbor University (Spring Arbor, Michigan). A retired United Methodist minister, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in History of Christianity in the West.

San Damiano Cross

(copy of c. 1100 original) Church of San Damiano