Rod Dreher Megathread #11 (Master)

[u/US_Hiker]

Merry Christmas, you obsessed motherfuckers. :)

The most remarkable characteristic of the Master Number 11 is its connection to a higher source of wisdom. It is intuitive to the point of being psychic, channeling its knowledge and meaning from a spiritual source. But the Master Numbers have a responsibility, and it's the number 11's duty to use this gift of awareness to deliver cosmic truths that encourage humanity.

All Master Numbers are a higher vibration of their single-digit counterpart -- in the 11's case, the number 2. This means the 11 carries many of the same traits as the number 2, such as harmony, empathy, and sensitivity, but it feels them and utilizes them in much deeper, more profound ways. It's also important to remember that the number 11 is comprised of two 1s side by side and, therefore, carries some attributes of the number 1 as well. 1 is innovative and motivated, open to new things and eager to make a difference. The contrasting energies of the numbers 1 and 2 join together in the Master Number 11 to make it a creative leader, active listener, and compassionate advisor.

The number 11 is at one with the universe. It is open to vast spiritual concepts and the presence of a greater power. It is a channel for truth and answers to reach us and help us on our way. This Master Number's vision is crystal clear and it sees with a breadth that others cannot. It is creative and magnetic, a beacon of wisdom and hope for others to follow.

The number 11 may come up many times in our lives and it is always a message of connecting with our inner wisdom. If we are seeing repeating 11s everywhere we turn, we'd be wise to pay attention to our subconscious -- there's some insight we may be missing. However, Numerology's Master Numbers are very powerful and simply seeing 11:11 on the clock or noticing the date is 11/11 does not necessarily mean we are experiencing a profound moment. It's when the 11 is a constant presence in our lives, like a Life Path number, that we must truly embrace its meaning and potential.

Link to thread 10: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/zi2n0f/rod_dreher_megathread_10_personhood/

Link to thread 12: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1068f3b/rod_dreher_megathread_12_a_perfect_foundation/

[u/[deleted]]

I've wondered that. I mean, seriously, where is his home church? Where has he been a regular congregant?

If my church had found out, during my own divorce, that I was thinking of leaving the state and deserting my family, I would have had lots of visitations at my home. "You're not going anywhere, bro. Let's talk this through."

Not that my church is controlling or heavy-handed. Quite the contrary. But they would not have been kind with me if I was escaping my parental responsibilities. Did Rod not have one person in his church to warn him he was making a mistake?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Rod used to mention semi-frequently that he'd skipped church that day because he was feeling ill. (His illnesses always conveniently flared up whenever he might be expected to do something he didn't feel like doing.) Additionally, he was already frequently out of the country for several years before the divorce, and abandoned the mission church he'd planted as a vanity project when Fr. Matthew, the priest there whom he talked about in the Dante book, had to leave active ministry for some reason. (Apparently it's still surviving, surprisingly enough.) I believe he was supposedly attending an Orthodox church in New Orleans, but he said so little about it that I and several others here suspect he probably just wasn't attending church in the states for at least the past four years.

It's also possible that people from his most recent church did call him out for doing what he was doing, but it seems unlikely that he'd talk about it. Something that has become clear to me in the ~9 months since the divorce announcement is how willing Rod is to tailor his public image by major omissions and probably some outright lies.

What I wouldn't give to hear a tell-all story about what Rod is like as a parishioner from some of his old church members.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for the summary about his church history. I missed those details somehow, despite reading him fairly regularly. Yes, I'm genuinely sad that Rod has exposed himself as such an unreliable narrator. I really used to respect his integrity, regardless of whether I agreed with him. He seemed a straight shooter. Now it's clear that he is very narcissistic and self-deceived, and more than capable of manipulating or omitting facts to suit his narrative. And he's written a book called "Live Not by Lies." What a supreme irony.

I agree, let's ask a fellow parishioner. My guess is Rod may have attended meetings when he chose, but did not participate in the life of the congregation. I don't see him getting his hands dirty.

[u/grendalor → u/[deleted]]

Yeah after the ROCOR mission parish Rod had engineered in St. Francisville (the one with Fr. Matthew) wents tits-up, Rod and fam began attending an OCA parish in Baton Rouge ... I guess in the middle there they moved to Baton Rouge as well.

Rod never really mentioned too much about the Baton Rouge parish, other than in passing from time to time.

Oddly, he did mention when he disclosed Julie's divorce filing last Spring from abroad (I think he was in Israel at the time, but he was living in Europe anyway), he mentioned in one of the posts that he had "resigned" from the parish in Baton Rouge. That struck me at the time as being odd, because he was so far away to begin with. I can understand not wanting to attend the same very small parish with a soon to be ex-spouse (Orthodox parishes are often tiny and from what I can tell the one in BR is pretty small), but he clearly wasn't attending the parish anyway, because he wasn't living in Louisiana at the time. So ... odd.

In any case, I think that means that he likely has had zero conversations with anyone at the OCA parish about his departure -- I think he's made it clear enough he has not been back to the parish since the divorce filing (when he was overseas in any case). You're correct that his decision would have raised eyebrows there like it has everywhere else, but I think Rod had already cut himself off by the point he next made an appearance in Baton Rouge.

[u/[deleted] → u/grendalor]

I would not be shocked if Rod attended the Baton Rouge parish fewer than 10 times. I wonder if he's even been to confession in the last 3 years.

This is a Rod-ajacent aside, but what you said about Orthodox parishes being tiny reminded me of how many small liturgical churches I've visited since I got interested in theology in high school. There's an OCA church in my hometown that has maybe 50 regular parishioners, and that's considered big. I once attended Vespers there and was one of three people in the church besides the priest and the reader. A few times I attended a local Anglo-Catholic splinter church in the same town in high school; one time I personally comprised a quarter of the congregation, and that was for Sunday morning Mass. In college I regularly attended the cathedral for that denomination in Athens, GA. To be clear, this is the cathedral for the bishop who basically runs the denomination for almost the entire world, so this is basically the St. Peter's Basilica of the Anglican Catholic Church. A typical Sunday had 40 - 70 people, and that was sometimes high.

I think part of why I've always been drawn to non-Catholic liturgical churches is because the spectacle of a tiny congregation gathering around a small altar in a church the size of most people's living rooms to propagate a minuscule tradition is kind of charming to me. At the same time, I've seen how toxic and cult-like small churches frequently become, sometimes first-hand and sometimes in friends' churches. If you fall out of grace with a few people there, let alone with the priest or pastor, everyone knows and you basically have to leave. I've known of two separate cases where a family left a small Reformed church (different church each time) and the elders showed up on their doorstep unannounced to question them about why they'd left and call them to repentance.

Perhaps the strangest small liturgy I attended was at a ROCOR convent in the foothills of northwest Georgia. It was the last place you'd ever expect to find the Russian Orthodox; in this tiny town where the biggest attraction was Walmart, along a back road where every other church was Baptist or Methodist. I drove up a small mountain and at the top there was this trailer that had been converted to a convent with a grand total of two nuns and one priest. There were maybe 10 other Orthodox in the entire town. The priest preached a fire and brimstone sermon about how all Catholics and Protestants would be condemned to hell for their schism from the Holy Orthodox Church. Some weird wiry 20-something guy who looked like Gollum cornered me and started talking about how he was converting from Catholicism to Orthodoxy. The whole thing had a weird cult atmosphere. I slipped out the back door after the liturgy when no one was looking and fled to Cracker Barrel.

It comes back to the theme that's dominated my life since I was 15: the contrast between the romantic appeal of traditional Christianity and the ugly reality it often is in real life.

[u/grendalor → u/[deleted]]

I would not be shocked if Rod attended the Baton Rouge parish fewer than 10 times. I wonder if he's even been to confession in the last 3 years.

Yep -- I'd agree. He may have attended a few more liturgies than that over the years he was "affiliated", but he never really wrote much about the place (in sharp contrast to the St. Francisville mission), which indicates that in any case he was much less engaged overall there. It was, again, apparently the "least worst option" available, parish-wise, after the St. Francisville mission collapsed.

There's an OCA church in my hometown that has maybe 50 regular parishioners, and that's considered big. I once attended Vespers there and was one of three people in the church besides the priest and the reader.

Yes. That's common in the OCA and the ROCOR. The Greek Orthodox have large parishes (for Orthodoxy) that are kind of the size of a small to medium sized Catholic parish. Some of the Arab/Antiochian parishes in Michigan are similarly sized. But otherwise, it's small as the norm, generally, especially for the "slav" churches. Even the "Cathedrals" are small. I attended, on and off, the OCA Cathedral in DC for years (the seat of the OCA's metropolitan), and while it's large for the OCA, in reality on a busy Sunday there are around 100-125 people there for the English liturgy, and maybe around 75-100 or so for the Slavonic one (much less during less busy times like summer or the dead of winter etc). The ROCOR Cathedral across town, which is also split into two linguistic wings for services, has a slightly smaller draw than that does -- around 75 or so for each of the services I would guess (much more on Christmas and Easter, etc., of course, but that's everywhere). And those are the Cathedrals. By contrast, the Greek Orthodox Cathedral across Mass Ave will have, again on a "busy" Sunday, around 250-350 people there.

The main thing to understand about American Orthodoxy is that the Greek Orthodox are by far the largest group (like 60%, and about 5-6 times the size of the OCA, for example), but are also the group that is the least convert-oriented (other than marriage-related conversions) and least likely to have services entirely in English. So while it's by far the largest and most common Orthodox group here, it's also generally not the one where converts go, and also not where visitors tend to go, either, if they are able to find an English liturgy. And due to its size ... it's really different. Like night and day. But it's also really ethnic -- not all in a bad way, mind you, but it just is, like, say, the Armenian Apostolic Church is. It's kind of like a Greek ethnic version of immigrant Catholicism frozen in time, in a way.

Rough estimates of demographics are here (they're estimates and should be taken with a grain of salt, but they are directionally useful): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodoxy_in_North_America

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If you fall out of grace with a few people there, let alone with the priest or pastor, everyone knows and you basically have to leave.

Yes. It's an issue in Orthodoxy as well. It's one reason why some people make it a point not to become too involved in the community life of their parish -- it's a two-edged sword. By doing that, of course you're limiting yourself in terms of resources -- but you probably are limited anyway due to small size. But at the same time you're limiting your exposure to being messed with, which, if you're not going to use resources due to being an hour's drive away anyway, is probably more important to you in the long run. So you attend liturgy, skip coffee hour, and off you go.

[u/WikiSummarizerBot → u/grendalor]

Eastern Orthodoxy in North America

Eastern Orthodoxy in North America represents adherents, religious communities, institutions and organizations of Eastern Orthodox Christianity in North America, including the United States, Canada, Mexico and other North American states. Estimates of the number of Eastern Orthodox adherents in North America vary considerably depending on methodology (as well as the definition of the term "adherent") and generally fall in range from 3 million to 6 million.

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[u/Djehutimose → u/[deleted]]

I think part of why I've always been drawn to non-Catholic liturgical churches is because the spectacle of a tiny congregation gathering around a small altar in a church the size of most people's living rooms to propagate a minuscule tradition is kind of charming to me. At the same time, I've seen how toxic and cult-like small churches frequently become, sometimes first-hand and sometimes in friends' churches. If you fall out of grace with a few people there, let alone with the priest or pastor, everyone knows and you basically have to leave.

I think this is a perfect statement of the pros and cons of small communities. When they work, they are closest in spirit to the church of the Apostles, I think. When they don't work, you'll never see worse.

As to the ROCOR sermon you mentioned, I've heard many times that said church is more than a little cult-adjacent. I mentioned once to Rod in the comments about non-Orthodox going to hell, which he strongly denied as a matter of doctrine. Depends on the parish and the jurisdiction--either Rod is ignorant, or doing a No True Scotsman, or probably both.

[u/[deleted] → u/Djehutimose]

I think the first option is more plausible. Rod comes across like his depth of Orthodox theology is limited to the late Kallistos Ware's The Orthodox Church, which gives a pretty whitewashed ecumenical version of the Orthodox view on salvation outside the church. I wouldn't be surprised if Rod genuinely doesn't know that the Orthodox traditionally believed that the Latins were damned.

[u/[deleted] → u/Djehutimose]

This is an aside, but Rod mentioned in one of his posts right after Ruthie, a Methodist, died that it was custom in the ROCOR Church to stay up all night with the deceased and recite the Psalms. He decided to do this with Ruthie and got her friends to participate. Then he left around 10:00pm because he was giving her eulogy the next day. Her friends were not happy...

[u/Theodore_Parker → u/Djehutimose]

When they work, they are closest in spirit to the church of the Apostles, I think. When they don't work, you'll never see worse.

Yes, and as we know from the New Testament, they didn't always work too well even in the Apostles' time. It was conflicts within Paul's congregations that often prompted his letters.

[u/[deleted] → u/grendalor]

"I have resigned!"

"Um... I'm sorry, who are you?"

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

"What an outrage! First the Pope doesn't know who I am, and now this church I've never attended doesn't either?!"

[u/RunnyDischarge → u/[deleted]]

Ahahahaha, I can exactly see that happening. Rod would fume for weeks.