I’m not sure why I just noticed this, but I suppose #6 represents some kind of a memorable milestone for this blog. Still, it would have been a lot cooler had the Owen White who was the old-school Ochlophobist of c. 3-4 years ago made fun of me, rather than the totally-over-Orthodoxy-and-if-I’m-not-going-to-go-to-church-anyway-I-may-as-well-not-go-to-the-Catholic-church-rather-than-not-go-to-the-Orthodox-church, “post-Ochlophobist” Owen. If I’d gotten a “Happydoxy” snipe or something like that, then that would have been major street cred, man.
I must offer a slight correction on a couple of points, however. I’m only an ex-Evangelical insofar as my mother took me to Overlake Christian Church as a child; I haven’t gone there regularly since I was 13 and at all since I was 16. To the extent that I’m ex-anything I’m an ex-Anglican. I won’t bother offering drinking and swearing bona fides to Owen, but he’s welcome to find out for himself whether or not I struggle to get through two beers should he ever come through Bloomington. I highly doubt this will ever happen for two reasons: 1) The drive between Memphis and Bloomington is awful and long under the best of circumstances, and there’s no reason to pass by Bloomington on any sane route out of Memphis unless Bloomington is exactly where you’re going, and I can’t imagine Owen ever actually wanting to come to Bloomington. 2) The only decent beer in Bloomington is from one of two microbreweries or specialty grocery stores, and surely there’s nothing more distastefully bourgeois than either of those. I could offer him a homebrew, except that I expect that a humanities grad student who homebrews is the only thing that could possibly be more bourgeois than a microbrewery.
I will note that Owen knows full well I agree with him on his criticisms of outward religious affectation in Orthodox converts, and that I’m neither the kind of guy to sign my e-mails “A sinner,” or to refer to myself as “Reader Richard”, so I have to conclude that he’s making fun of me specifically so he can refer traffic my way — in which case, thanks much! I do find it amusing that one of his busier admiring commenters now that he’s Catholic again is somebody who is one of the more notoriously argumentative anti-Orthodox online personalities out there, and who four years ago shrieked to me in an e-mail about how virulently and shamefully anti-Catholic he was, and how that was representative of most Orthodox bloggers. Maybe Owen will turn into the Catholic equivalent of… well, perhaps you already know who I mean without me saying the name, and I’d like to keep it that way, lest they appear.
Leitourgeia kai Qurbana: Contra den Zeitgeist 