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Interview with Marina Madej, a former Catholic from Poland who Converted to Orthodoxy through Baptism

Source: Mystagogy

March 30, 2016

In this interview with Marina Madej, a former Catholic from Poland who converted to Orthodoxy through Holy Baptism, we find one of many unfortunate examples of not allowing a convert who desires Holy Baptism to be baptized, forcing upon them oikonomia unnecessarily to the point that it drives them to a distant land seeking Baptism as their conscience urges. Since the schism in the eleventh century, the Church has traditionally accepted converts from Catholicism either by Baptism or Chrismation, the latter being allowed by oikonomia, but both traditions equally valid. To be received by Confession alone is an unnecessarily extreme form of oikonomia to receive a Catholic, as they do in Poland, which is why Marina fled to Greece to be properly received into the Orthodox Church.

3/31/2016

See also

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“You need to get used to Orthodoxy”
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Father Thomas, a German raised as Lutheran, converted to Orthodoxy from Catholicism. He will tell us about the driving force behind his spiritual quests and the importance of dedicated insistence upon the Truth. We will also learn the answers to such questions as “Should we say in conversations with members of other denominations that their teachings are heretical?” and “What should our attitude be toward the Branch Theory?”

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On June 4/17 eight people were baptised at St. Thomas’s Church by Father Pantelejmon (Jovanovic) with the blessing of His Eminence Metropolitan Seraphim, Archbishop of Johannesburg and Pretoria. They are Margaret Mphela of Klipfontein View, Midrand and her four children, Nina (Joyce) Aphane and her daughter Sophia (Sophie), and Margaret Mphela’s niece, Mary (Valencia) Semenya of Mamelodi.

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Fr. Peter Alban Heers
The Orthodox Church’s understanding of heterodox baptism flows from and is determined by its self-understanding of being the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church,” which alone performs the one baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ. This is so, for the Church is known in her mysteries. In and through the mysteries the Church exists and is continually formed, her borders are set, her members identified. “Those who live their lives outside the mysterial (sacramental) life are outside the body of Christ.”

Comments

Castrese Tipaldi4/6/2016 3:41 pm

A person is properly received in the Church in the way the Church (in the person of the local hierarch) consider appropriate.

The Church binds and the Church loose, a privilege directly from the the Lord.
If the bishop is wrong (lacking the presuppositions for oikonomia), the bishop will give account.
The faithful belongs to the Church in any case.

Therefore, while her feelings are understandable, Marina's conduct has been improper.
To rule the house does not belong to a son or to a daughter, but to the master of the house.
To come to the Church to be pleased in your feelings means that you come with pride. A very wrong start!