Because I grew up as a religious minority—a Greek Orthodox kid treading water in the Kelly-green sea of Chicago Irish Catholics—I was never all that keen on hunting down the heretics.
“Are you really Christian?” a kid from St. Catherine said as we conducted our endless theological discussions either at the playground or playing fast pitching on the wall of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox church. “Do you believe in Jesus or the Greek gods? Father Kane doesn’t think you’re Christians.”
Please, don’t burn me, I cried. I’m a White Sox fan.
In the 1960s, a time of squishy theology as the political left was killing off the Roman Catholic Church and the desperate church announced the end of the Latin Mass. A few members of our St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox parish—including my mom– were supportive of inter-faith dialogue with the nearby Catholics from St. Catherine of Alexandria.
But Father Kane put his foot down and killed the idea about a dialogue with “those Greeks.”
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