Thank you so much for this. Working with a lot of young people, I share your concerns – and your solution. The best thing we can do is model a happy and successful marriage – after all, children learn by copying from the youngest age.
I'm glad I haven't seen that IRL, nor in the corners of the Internet I frequent.
I have heard from my BIL in NY that they're having issues with Protestant/Evangelical converts in their parish trying to make things more like the churches they left.
Oh, and you might want to change the date in the caption of your family's trip. Unless, of course, you and Fr. Gregory really *did* marry in 1944.
Didn't you just write a couple of days ago how the Ortho-bro phenomenon is mostly online? I found this post confusing coming right after your last one.
You write “Everyone needs self-respect, and the respect of their culture, to function in a healthy way.”
I fully agree with you and I am suddenly thinking about the lack of seriousness in our civilisation.
We read in Ecclesiastes 3:4, there is “A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance”.
But thanks to instant messaging app (of course not only), people do not stop sending and receiving memes and jokes, funny pictures and videos, all day long. Everything, everyone is a legitimate target for a good laugh, no matter what.
I would see a link between this non stop laughter and the disappearance of solemnity in church services (I come from a reformed Baptist milieu), where we find jokes, worldly music, a lack of understanding of the sacred, if not of awe of God.
We certainly should regain seriousness (respect?) in our life, services, relations, and keep the jokes at their just place, ie. occasional.
Yes, very much, and it's kind of a rebuke to me. Well, Orthodox worship is always awe-filled and not jokey, but personally--from childhood I loved to laugh, and sought out the humor and cartoon books in my parents' library, and have loved joking all my life. Yet it comes up in Orthodox saints' lives pretty regularly that they avoided joking around, even in childhood. There's an underlying expectation that we all know that laughing is unsettling to the soul, and shakes up our ability to remain always in the Lord's presence ("pray without ceasing"). A call to sobriety is definitely something I run into, in Orthodoxy, on a regular basis. I've never quite known what to do about this. I go on being a "jokey" person. (I reflect too on how much suffering I *don't* experience, compared to people even 100 years ago--eg give birth to 10 children, only two live to adulthood. That would make anyone more sober.)
There is a time to feast just like there is a time to fast. The Puritan impulse is something we run into among people who confuse dourness with sanctity. I can think of a man at my church who complained that our revived men's group had too much fellowshipping - he suggested to me that that should be limited to fifteen minutes, and for the rest of the meeting he outlined in great detail serious things we should attend to with an exactness that would do a Marine drill sergeant proud. Also, as you note with your last sentence past eras included some grim realities. And one of the most formative eras for Orthodox, the early Middle Ages, were among the worst years to live through across all of history.
I also recall that the Pharisees complained about Jesus and his disciples being a bit too much on the merry side.
Fifteen minutes... seems oddly specific! But of a piece with how you describe the rest of his comments. I honestly think some of the people who focus so much on liturgical and theological details may have OCD. It gets problematic when they start to berate or bully others with tender consciences.
I am an orderly person with a gift for organizing things (remind me to tell you about the Mother's Day luncheon I organized at church two weeks ago). But there are people in this world whose passion for rigor and exactitude far exceeds mine, making me look like a sloven slob.
I am also wary of global systems of thought, even if they may sometimes contain certain good things. But the totality of a system can quickly become stifling. When it comes to our relationship with laughter, just as with our relationship to everything else, I believe that each of us must seek the right balance, inspired by the Word of God, the example of Christ, the testimony of the cloud of witnesses, and the fact that our entire lives, including our tastes, must be sanctified by God
While this is easy to write, it is much harder to put into practice—I see this clearly in my own life. Therefore, let us all encourage one another to progress in theosis by cultivating a spirit of moderation (or self-restraint: “Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism.” in A World Split Apart, Solzhenitsyn’s Commencement Address, Harvard University, June 8, 1978) as well as a clear conscience before God.
Our hostess previously posted a piece with a photo of a Clown Mass. I think most of us here find such a concept an abomination. But we Orthodox do still have the concept of a Fool for Christ-- a person who has made sacrifice of their reason to God and thereby serves as a reminder that all our fine and fancy civilization is also a path to the grave and brings us not one inch closer to God.
See, the clown mass thing isn’t even funny to me. Is it supposed to be funny? Ironically, I find it sad and depressing, even revolting. I think good humor sort of rests on the need for some things to be kept serious. A time for all things, indeed.
But our Lord also sometimes expressed humor, e.g. when he called James and John "sons of thunder", which was confirmed when they asked Jesus to call down lightning on a town that wouldn't believe in him.
My thoughts were meant to be general, not directed at specific cases, and certainly not at you. My apologies; I didn’t mean to lecture you in any way.
Blaise Pascal once said that people seek distraction to escape the thought of death. However, modern technologies—smartphones, social media, etc.—have made this distraction even easier, faster, and more constant. The scale of this today seems to me to be completely different from back then. It’s as if the purpose of life were to laugh—or rather, to mock—everything and take nothing seriously anymore. The inevitable consequence is nihilism. As Rod Dreher’s example shows, by constantly creating anti-Semitic memes, many young people end up becoming anti-Semitic themselves.
I therefore qualify my conclusion somewhat: we live in a world that cultivates, values, facilitates, encourages, and rewards... mockery. Nothing new under the sun, for the Bible speaks of this abundantly (Psalm 1).
I agree with most of what you wrote, but I have to disagree with singling out “Life with Father”, which you say, “…treats the wife’s imbecility as a given.” It’s just the opposite; Father thinks he rules the roost, and he constantly issues edicts, but his wife, portrayed by the inimitable Irene Dunn, has the cunning and ability to steer things her way every time, without ruffling his feathers. It reminds me of the quip that the man is the head of the household, but the woman is the neck and she can control where it turns.
That's a good point. I haven't seen that (excellent) movie in many years. What I was remembering was the one scene where she is telling him that she returned something to the store and then had all that money to spend, and bought a small statue of a dog, and it didn't cost anything. But the character wasn't stupid overall, and she did steer her husband her way. She got him baptized!
Yes, I should have been clear. The Warren Beatty one is not the one I meant, which does have a different plot. This is "Heaven Can Wait" (1938), described on IMDB as "An old roué arrives in Hades to review his life with Satan, who will rule on his eligibility to enter the Underworld." Don Ameche recalls one affair after another.
The Beatty film was a remake of "Here Comes Mr Jordan" from 1941. There is another movie from the '40s actually called "Heaven Can Wait" but it is a different story.
Wow revenge porn and orthobros in one sentence shocks me. The root of it, I feel, is entitlement (by virtue of being male females should be required to mate with them at their will.) To me its the stuff of nightmares.
That *would* be the stuff of nightmares. But I don't know that that is what anyone is advocating. Regardless, the subtlety of human interaction is what young men need to learn, and haven't had a chance.
I've seen my share of crazed Orthobros on reddit. Thank God we don't have any in my church.
I don't think any of this is sadly unique to Trads and Orthobros, its pretty common among the very angry InCel males on reddit. One posted his manifesto -- which I flagged and his account was shadowbanned inside of 15 minutes -- before he went and killed a number of women in the UK with a shotgun.
I feel much of this is downstream of porn addiction, some men’s brains have been so warped by it they truly despise women - also, it’s worth noting many of these men (who are mostly just online) don’t attend a church regularly, many are inquirers or very new converts and most prioritize following YouTube theologians/debators (many of whom also are not under a priests or bishops authority) over their own priests and bishops. Some even insulted priests who were speaking out against this directly. It’s hard to speak up about these things but I’m so glad so many of us are.
In a comment on your last essay I wrote that young women definitely use the word Orthobro between us. In RD’s article he describes a woman saying she cannot find a man both in the church and “normal”. Last week I used the word normal to assure a friend of a guy I was connecting her to. Sorry “abnormal” guys. I have a big heart for your intentions and needs, but you are self sabotaging with the misogyny you are seeped in online- (no that’s not just a concept invented by feminists). Probably 10 years ago now I was swarmed online by Orthobros for something related to women in Orthodoxy, I don’t even remember what, but the comments Katherine received are familiar from that experience. And immediately left Instagram, never got it back. So, ultimately thankful for that.
RD asks “I wonder how safe young women might feel in parishes with a sizable Orthobro contingent.” Short answer, not very. I won’t tell bad stories here. My most recent church before the one we attend now has a sizable Orthobro contingent, but also a few older men including a deacon who is very attentive to safety. At least one bro was banned from the church after making women uncomfortable. This should be the response. And not delayed.
Stumbled here thanks to the many rabbit holes of Substack. Interesting perspectives in both the article and in the comment section. Love the candid desire to model respectful marriages, excellent reflections Frederica.
So true, most of my nieces and nephews are still single and lonely. Our society teaches them to live for themselves first, self fulfillment is paramount, being a couple isn’t cool or desirable, in fact for many kids it’s considered corny.
Thank you so much for this. Working with a lot of young people, I share your concerns – and your solution. The best thing we can do is model a happy and successful marriage – after all, children learn by copying from the youngest age.
I'm glad I haven't seen that IRL, nor in the corners of the Internet I frequent.
I have heard from my BIL in NY that they're having issues with Protestant/Evangelical converts in their parish trying to make things more like the churches they left.
Oh, and you might want to change the date in the caption of your family's trip. Unless, of course, you and Fr. Gregory really *did* marry in 1944.
Thank you! I fixed it this morning. Dumb. I guess I had that number stuck in my mind from saying, earlier, that it's when I met Rod.
🤣
There is no 'orthobro' situation, just as there has never been any kind of $n_bro situation.
I hope you're right. In any case, Rod is a great researcher and I look forward to what he finds.
Didn't you just write a couple of days ago how the Ortho-bro phenomenon is mostly online? I found this post confusing coming right after your last one.
You write “Everyone needs self-respect, and the respect of their culture, to function in a healthy way.”
I fully agree with you and I am suddenly thinking about the lack of seriousness in our civilisation.
We read in Ecclesiastes 3:4, there is “A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance”.
But thanks to instant messaging app (of course not only), people do not stop sending and receiving memes and jokes, funny pictures and videos, all day long. Everything, everyone is a legitimate target for a good laugh, no matter what.
I would see a link between this non stop laughter and the disappearance of solemnity in church services (I come from a reformed Baptist milieu), where we find jokes, worldly music, a lack of understanding of the sacred, if not of awe of God.
We certainly should regain seriousness (respect?) in our life, services, relations, and keep the jokes at their just place, ie. occasional.
Does it make sense?
Yes, very much, and it's kind of a rebuke to me. Well, Orthodox worship is always awe-filled and not jokey, but personally--from childhood I loved to laugh, and sought out the humor and cartoon books in my parents' library, and have loved joking all my life. Yet it comes up in Orthodox saints' lives pretty regularly that they avoided joking around, even in childhood. There's an underlying expectation that we all know that laughing is unsettling to the soul, and shakes up our ability to remain always in the Lord's presence ("pray without ceasing"). A call to sobriety is definitely something I run into, in Orthodoxy, on a regular basis. I've never quite known what to do about this. I go on being a "jokey" person. (I reflect too on how much suffering I *don't* experience, compared to people even 100 years ago--eg give birth to 10 children, only two live to adulthood. That would make anyone more sober.)
There is a time to feast just like there is a time to fast. The Puritan impulse is something we run into among people who confuse dourness with sanctity. I can think of a man at my church who complained that our revived men's group had too much fellowshipping - he suggested to me that that should be limited to fifteen minutes, and for the rest of the meeting he outlined in great detail serious things we should attend to with an exactness that would do a Marine drill sergeant proud. Also, as you note with your last sentence past eras included some grim realities. And one of the most formative eras for Orthodox, the early Middle Ages, were among the worst years to live through across all of history.
I also recall that the Pharisees complained about Jesus and his disciples being a bit too much on the merry side.
Fifteen minutes... seems oddly specific! But of a piece with how you describe the rest of his comments. I honestly think some of the people who focus so much on liturgical and theological details may have OCD. It gets problematic when they start to berate or bully others with tender consciences.
I am an orderly person with a gift for organizing things (remind me to tell you about the Mother's Day luncheon I organized at church two weeks ago). But there are people in this world whose passion for rigor and exactitude far exceeds mine, making me look like a sloven slob.
I am also wary of global systems of thought, even if they may sometimes contain certain good things. But the totality of a system can quickly become stifling. When it comes to our relationship with laughter, just as with our relationship to everything else, I believe that each of us must seek the right balance, inspired by the Word of God, the example of Christ, the testimony of the cloud of witnesses, and the fact that our entire lives, including our tastes, must be sanctified by God
While this is easy to write, it is much harder to put into practice—I see this clearly in my own life. Therefore, let us all encourage one another to progress in theosis by cultivating a spirit of moderation (or self-restraint: “Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism.” in A World Split Apart, Solzhenitsyn’s Commencement Address, Harvard University, June 8, 1978) as well as a clear conscience before God.
Our hostess previously posted a piece with a photo of a Clown Mass. I think most of us here find such a concept an abomination. But we Orthodox do still have the concept of a Fool for Christ-- a person who has made sacrifice of their reason to God and thereby serves as a reminder that all our fine and fancy civilization is also a path to the grave and brings us not one inch closer to God.
See, the clown mass thing isn’t even funny to me. Is it supposed to be funny? Ironically, I find it sad and depressing, even revolting. I think good humor sort of rests on the need for some things to be kept serious. A time for all things, indeed.
No, the clown mass was shown as an example of an abomination. Not something funny amongst this crowd for sure.
But our Lord also sometimes expressed humor, e.g. when he called James and John "sons of thunder", which was confirmed when they asked Jesus to call down lightning on a town that wouldn't believe in him.
My thoughts were meant to be general, not directed at specific cases, and certainly not at you. My apologies; I didn’t mean to lecture you in any way.
Blaise Pascal once said that people seek distraction to escape the thought of death. However, modern technologies—smartphones, social media, etc.—have made this distraction even easier, faster, and more constant. The scale of this today seems to me to be completely different from back then. It’s as if the purpose of life were to laugh—or rather, to mock—everything and take nothing seriously anymore. The inevitable consequence is nihilism. As Rod Dreher’s example shows, by constantly creating anti-Semitic memes, many young people end up becoming anti-Semitic themselves.
I therefore qualify my conclusion somewhat: we live in a world that cultivates, values, facilitates, encourages, and rewards... mockery. Nothing new under the sun, for the Bible speaks of this abundantly (Psalm 1).
Rod’s heart is always in the right place.
HAHAHAHA!
Daniel, it wasn't meant as a pun
I agree with most of what you wrote, but I have to disagree with singling out “Life with Father”, which you say, “…treats the wife’s imbecility as a given.” It’s just the opposite; Father thinks he rules the roost, and he constantly issues edicts, but his wife, portrayed by the inimitable Irene Dunn, has the cunning and ability to steer things her way every time, without ruffling his feathers. It reminds me of the quip that the man is the head of the household, but the woman is the neck and she can control where it turns.
That's a good point. I haven't seen that (excellent) movie in many years. What I was remembering was the one scene where she is telling him that she returned something to the store and then had all that money to spend, and bought a small statue of a dog, and it didn't cost anything. But the character wasn't stupid overall, and she did steer her husband her way. She got him baptized!
Is there a different Heaven Can Wait than the one with Warren Beatty? (In that one it was the wife, played by Dyan Cannon, who was unfaithful.)
Yes, I should have been clear. The Warren Beatty one is not the one I meant, which does have a different plot. This is "Heaven Can Wait" (1938), described on IMDB as "An old roué arrives in Hades to review his life with Satan, who will rule on his eligibility to enter the Underworld." Don Ameche recalls one affair after another.
The Beatty film was a remake of "Here Comes Mr Jordan" from 1941. There is another movie from the '40s actually called "Heaven Can Wait" but it is a different story.
Dana
Wow revenge porn and orthobros in one sentence shocks me. The root of it, I feel, is entitlement (by virtue of being male females should be required to mate with them at their will.) To me its the stuff of nightmares.
That *would* be the stuff of nightmares. But I don't know that that is what anyone is advocating. Regardless, the subtlety of human interaction is what young men need to learn, and haven't had a chance.
I've seen my share of crazed Orthobros on reddit. Thank God we don't have any in my church.
I don't think any of this is sadly unique to Trads and Orthobros, its pretty common among the very angry InCel males on reddit. One posted his manifesto -- which I flagged and his account was shadowbanned inside of 15 minutes -- before he went and killed a number of women in the UK with a shotgun.
I feel much of this is downstream of porn addiction, some men’s brains have been so warped by it they truly despise women - also, it’s worth noting many of these men (who are mostly just online) don’t attend a church regularly, many are inquirers or very new converts and most prioritize following YouTube theologians/debators (many of whom also are not under a priests or bishops authority) over their own priests and bishops. Some even insulted priests who were speaking out against this directly. It’s hard to speak up about these things but I’m so glad so many of us are.
I agree! Porn has damaged so many minds that they can't see women as fellow humans worthy of respect.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you
In a comment on your last essay I wrote that young women definitely use the word Orthobro between us. In RD’s article he describes a woman saying she cannot find a man both in the church and “normal”. Last week I used the word normal to assure a friend of a guy I was connecting her to. Sorry “abnormal” guys. I have a big heart for your intentions and needs, but you are self sabotaging with the misogyny you are seeped in online- (no that’s not just a concept invented by feminists). Probably 10 years ago now I was swarmed online by Orthobros for something related to women in Orthodoxy, I don’t even remember what, but the comments Katherine received are familiar from that experience. And immediately left Instagram, never got it back. So, ultimately thankful for that.
RD asks “I wonder how safe young women might feel in parishes with a sizable Orthobro contingent.” Short answer, not very. I won’t tell bad stories here. My most recent church before the one we attend now has a sizable Orthobro contingent, but also a few older men including a deacon who is very attentive to safety. At least one bro was banned from the church after making women uncomfortable. This should be the response. And not delayed.
Stumbled here thanks to the many rabbit holes of Substack. Interesting perspectives in both the article and in the comment section. Love the candid desire to model respectful marriages, excellent reflections Frederica.
🙏💜
So true, most of my nieces and nephews are still single and lonely. Our society teaches them to live for themselves first, self fulfillment is paramount, being a couple isn’t cool or desirable, in fact for many kids it’s considered corny.
Well said. Mutual respect is so important to a healthy relationship. As the saying goes “teach your children well”.