Orthodoxy's relationship to psychology and psychiatry

[Daniel Jeandet]

I know there are a couple of you who post here and are involved in psychology or psychiatry.

Here is what I think this is a good article on the Orthodox view of psychology and psychiatry:

[Link: Opens in new window] (http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/orthodox_psychotherapy_d_avdeev_e.htm)

Perhaps those of you with training or experience could give your opinions on this article.

[Matthew Panchisin]

Dear Daniel,

About one week ago I was revisiting this subject matter and having a discussion regarding psychology relative to the Orthodox Church I maintain a conclusion and believe that it has no place. I found the below text to be a good read. It is attempt to address spiritual matters outside of the Church through intellectual reasoning and simply identifies the consistency and machinations of the demons and labels them as obsessive compulsive behavior etc... I believe to subscribe to it's notions even partially leads to further deception.

Excerpt from: Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition
31. From Filioque to Humanism
One of the great myths of Church History is without doubt the notion that a Schism between Eastern and Western Christianity took place in 1054. That a Schism took place is of course fact. But the date of 1054 is the date of nothing more than a symbolic event. We must first understand that the separation of Eastern and Western Christianity was not an event, but a process. Moreover, this process began at the summit of Western society and its consequences only gradually spread downwards. As the English proverb says: 'A fish always stinks from the head'. But when did the process of Schism begin? And when did it end? To these questions we shall now attempt to reply.
We believe that the Schism process begins at the end of the 8th century among a select few at the Court of Charles the Great, Charlemagne. It began with the revival of pagan Roman knowledge, of the Judeo-Babylonian legacy of Rome. In the sin of pride, Charlemagne wanted to set up a new Roman Empire in the West. All Western rulers have since tried to do the same, but all their Empires, like Charlemagne's, have fallen, because they lacked God's blessing in their pride. To renew the Roman Empire Charlemagne had first to reject the Christian Roman Empire, Romanity, whose capital was in New Rome, the City of the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantinople. Ideologically this was possible by reviving the pagan or classical Roman system of thought. This meant, in other words, reviving rationalism, the use of the human reason, the syllogism and dialectic, what St Paul calls 'fleshly wisdom' (2 Cor. 1, 12). The knowledge and the use of this logic came to Charlemagne's Court above all from Spain, where it had been learnt from Jewish thinkers who had preserved the legacy of Roman and Greek pagan philosophy. The head of Charlemagne's school, Alcuin, sums up best the nature of this rationalism in his work on the Holy and Undivided Trinity: 'Only the subtlety of categories can shed light on the profoundest questions concerning the Holy Trinity'. The uses of such rationalistic techniques eventually led, in the late 11th century, to a new culture, a new way of thinking. They led to:
The rejection of theology in favour of philosophy.
The rejection of monasticism in favour of scholasticism.
The rejection of monasteries in favour of universities.
The rejection of the Gospel in favour of pagan writers.
The rejection of cultivating the heart in favour of cultivating the intellect.
The rejection of ascetically-won grace in favour of intellectually-won learning.
The rejection of the knowledge of the world to come by the Uncreated Light in favour of the despair of the graceless knowledge of the fallen world here and now.
Ultimately it is this graceless and godless rationalism that built the modern world as we know it, from the Atomic Bomb to the IBM computer.
Through this rationalism, wisdom, which is the harmony of knowledge and faith, gave way to godless science. Wisdom, Who rode on the back of an as s, gave way to 'the pride of life' (1 John 2, 16), but 'the foolishness of God is wiser than men'. (1 Cor. 1, 25). For in rationalism, these reasonings of the fallen, human mind, one finds not God, but psychology, a reflection of the self, and all the demonic impulses to which the fallen mind is prone. The theology of the rationalist is only the psychological extension of the self, a god built in one's own fallen image. Thus, in the Middle Ages, the Western mind saw God as a stern, vengeful, feudal baron. In the Renaissance, Michelangelo portrayed Him as a sensuous, fleshly deity. The 18th century 'Enlightenment' depicted Him as a god of Reason, the expression of deism. Today, if the West says that God does not exist, it is simply because He does not exist in the mind of 'modern' man. This does not mean His objective non-existence, it simply means that 'modern' Western man has succeeded, after centuries of efforts, in chasing God from his mind. Man feels abandoned by God - but this is only because man has abandoned God, not because God has abandoned man.
The rationalism that began at the end of the 8th century with Charlemagne had spread by the 11th century to Rome (which until that time had refuted it) by means of German Popes. From here on the separation of Western Christendom from Eastern Christendom became inevitable. And, unfortunately, the East did not pay great attention to this at the time. Firstly, the West was populated by perhaps only 10 million, whereas the Eastern capital, Constantinople, had itself a population of 1 million. And then also only a minute fraction of the Western population knew anything about philosophy and categories and rationalism. Only a minute fraction had even heard of the new, rationalistic doctrine, called the 'filioque'. The East, moreover, had little appreciation of rationalism, which the Fathers of the Church had long ago overcome. Viewed from the East, the events of 1054 seemed to be just another barbarian revolt in distant provinces. As soon as a Roman Pope could be appointed, the whole issue would die down and the Roman Christian Commonwealth, Romanitas, could be made whole again. Although it was not understood at the time, in fact the events of 1054 were the beginning of a final struggle between Jerusalem and Babylon, between Christian and Neo-Pagan. It would lead sacral, peasant kingdoms, with their unity of Church, Monarchy and Nation, firstly into feudal tyrannies, lastly into secular, urban demagogueries. Christian Roman architecture would give way to the Gothic masons' rationalist domination of the world. The squat, Pre-Romanesque, expressing the Incarnation of God on Earth would give way to the Gothic spire yearning skywards in search of God no more on Earth: the appointment of His 'Vicar' in Rome was proof of it.
Behind all these changes and the date 1054 itself, lay the culmination of all the consequences of rationalism. This was and is the speculation of the filioque. It was and is the filioque, the statement that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father, that locked up the Holy Spirit between the Father and the Son. In human terms, it locked up the heart, the receptacle for grace, between the reason and the body. By divorcing man from God in this way, by distancing the Holy Spirit from the Earth and putting Him where the Gothic spires pointed, in the empty sky, the Holy Spirit was put beyond man's reach. Thus man was deprived of grace, as well as of the principle of authority and unity in the Church. The only solution was to replace the Holy Spirit with a human institution.
The error of giving all power and authority to one individual is that eventually everyone will claim the same. This is exactly what happened in the West with the Reformation, with Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, Henry VIII and umpteen others. In secular terms this dilution of power was reflected in the rule of the masses, democracy; in philosophical terms, this is man-worship, humanism.
Humanism is the religion which states that man is the measure of all things, that he is independent, autonomous of God. Instead of glorifying God, we glorify man and his rational faculties. Man is put in the place of God. But reason is not the source of Truth, merely the receptacle for its expression. And this was precisely the error of the thinkers who had gathered at the Court of Charlemagne. Thus another thinker of the 9th century, Erigena, wrote: 'For those who seek seriously and strive to discover the reason for all things, all the means of reaching a pious and perfect doctrine reside in the science and discipline of philosophy'. 'We must only adopt the opinions of the Fathers if with them we need to strengthen our arguments in the eyes of those who reason poorly and thus yield to authority rather than reason'. 'True reason, since it relies on its own strength, has no need whatsoever to be strengthened by any authority'. Reason, as the philosophers of Charlemagne, did not understand, because of their self-deluding pride of mind, is but the receptacle of Truth. The source of Truth is the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit, 'Who proceedeth from the Father' according to the Gospel. But the rationalists, through the filioque, had distanced and removed the Spirit of Truth, fixing Him between the Father and the Son.
Humanism is driven on by a spiritual force which strives to incorporate itself into fallen man and change the world after its own patterns. Humanism preaches the worship and glorification of man in his Fall, in his sin. Man has been flattered into thinking that, despite the Fall, despite his sin and his fallen and sinful reason, he can still reason aright. The worship of fallen man is thus actually in part the worship of sin. This is why modern man has been able to empty his mind and heart of God - he has put sin in the place, the only place where God cannot abide. Thus, absurdly, he has become an atheist, an 'agnostic', he has grown 'grace proof', locked in the bubble of his own egoistic godlessness, his own self-worship. And he finds himself lonely and lost in a meaningless universe.
Humanism is then ultimately the mocking of demons over fallen man. So the Russian writer, Gorky, wrote: 'Man, whose name has so proud a sound'. This is the rasping laughter of devils as Stalin extinguishes 70 million human-beings and Hitler tens of millions of others - all in the name of man - and humanism. Humanism is the end-result of the Schism, of rationalism. But it is also the beginning of something else, the mystery of iniquity, the Antichrist, Who comes in place of Christ and so against Him. But Antichrist and all his hordes and minions do not see that they have lost - for the last word in human history will be the Word of God. 'Come, Lord Jesus!'

[Daniel Jeandet]

Matthew, let me know what you think of the article at the other end of the link I posted.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Matthew,

For about 15 years now my 'hobby' has been trying to understand how the Schism took place, its roots and its unfolding into our present society.Of course as they say 'we stand on the shoulders of our fathers': St Photios & St Gregory Palamas were directly reacting to those distortions in western theology and piety that they recognised to be anathema to Orthodoxy. Also in some ways they were reacting to the growing influence of rationalist philosophy in this deviation.

In Russia we also have those who came from the Slavophile school such as Khomiakov & Kirevsky. Inspired by the need to discover Russia's place within the Western world they turned to Orthodoxy & Byzantine roots to understand Russia's uniqueness and to discern the truth of what had happened in the west.

For a long time I have tried to discover the actual historical roots of the schism: as you point out they first manifest themselves in the 'Renaissance Of Charlemagne'; also in the growing use of pagan philosophy as a driving force in western theology. In a sense Charlemagne's court is a kind of 'dry run' for what will by the 10thc begin to be real distinct characteristics of western society & church life (of course at that time the two are inseperable & influence each other).

I think it is difficult for us to understand now what a cataclysmic shift in mind & heart this was; until this time the West after its conversion was largely Orthodox in every aspect. I would take the risk of calling it the First Revolution in its meaning & impact.
For such a thing to have ocurred however it could not simply have fallen out of the sky. What are the roots of this? In the writings of St Gregory Pope of Rome & also St Gregory of Tours (6thc) one finds dire warnings about the break-up of western Europe at the hands of a violent military elite; this period is now recognised to be the roots of the feudal mentality. As of yet I cannot find direct historical evidence of how this led to the situation such as could be found at Charlemagne's court 200 years later. But one sign of the break-down in western society was how the church was itself becoming feudalised. Church & society were gradually splintering into smaller & smaller mini-worlds each in violent mirror image of the other.

Somehow it is in this increasingly broken world that the western churchmen make that momentous spiritual shift towards philosophy. I can only speculate that the breakdown in the west at this time was a spiritual one as much as a social; after all Orthodoxy has endured every conceivable trauma without this type of inner change. So the change is not only due to social trauma.

The Crusades are a perfect case study of many of these themes. The Crusades were actually a radically different way of seeing what the church is and its aim. The effects on society were profound and long-lasting (perhaps permanent). Interestingly much of this can be seen in the Byzantine records of the arrival of the First Crusaders in the Orthodox East. There was a general shock about how bishops & monks were marching off to war with sword in hand; but for the most part this was seen as being natural for 'western barbarians.' I think Matthew's point is borne out by the fact that when the Crusaders arrived in Byzantine territory & also when they proceeded through the famous ancient sees of Orthodoxy such as Antioch at first there was concelebration between the western & eastern clergy- this 40 years after 1054! The first rifts show as the Crusaders replace the Eastern Patriarchs of Antioch & Jerusalem with Latin bishops who are then placed under the authority of the Pope. This gradually becomes a permanent rift as the Crusaders become more & more predatory especially during the 4th Crusade of 1204. Of course one could say (and many do nowadays) "well that was just the violence of centuries ago, why should that have caused such a deep seated seperation?" I think we misinterpret what our Orthodox forbearers were reacting to when we ascribe everything to the aspect of the violence of the Crusaders. Actually I believe the reaction arose from the recognition (which took place gradually) that the new western religious & social vision was opposed to Orthodoxy theologically speaking and was fundamentally destructive to its spirit. Simply replacing Orthodox Patriarchs with Latin ones, while obviously wrong would have been something that in time could have been overcome. But once these Latin patriarchs were grafted into the new Papal system of church organisation, this was a fundamental destruction of Orthodoxy's conception of what the Church is.

[Melissa]

Dear Father Raphael, bless,
Would you say that our present situation, where a President is derided for "letting" his faith influence his decisionmaking, is both the result of this shift, and evidence of it? In this society we don't readily accept the concept that faith is not separate from daily life, but integral, woven into us as we grow in that faith...I don't know what phrase to use to express what I mean - because I can't myself live it, although a faint glimmer appears on the horizon now and then of how grace-filled such a life would be.
I don't want to introduce politics here specifically, but only as a theme showing a possible current illustration of the philosophical shift named in your post #140. When I hear the argument that a perosn's faith should not influence their decisionmaking (as certain Supreme Court judge candidates were questioned about, I believe), I thought "How could it not?" Yet I know people do accept that point, rather than the other...
In Christ,
Melissa

[Owen Jones]

The influence of philosophy in the Church is a very complicated subject that does not easily lend itself to generalizations. The idea that any philosophical reasoning in the Church is tantamount to pagan influence might be one of those generalizations. In the East, virtually all of the Greek Fathers were educated in the Platonic Academy. This included instruction in geometry, mathematics, astronomy and cosmology, logic, and, as a consequence a familiarity with the classical form of Reason, which is understood as the Divine Noetic faculty in man. The Syriac Fathers on the other hand were extremely critical of what they termed Greek abstraction, and in fact the very term Greek was an epithet. Syriac theology was very concrete, carrying on the Hebraic form. A thing is what it is, not a symbol of something, or an allegory of something.

Some Fathers attack "pagan" philosophy, others, such as St. Gregory the Theologian, appear to use the term philosophizing as an equivalent term for theologizing. The most oft quoted text by the Greek Fathers, second to Holy Scripture, is Plato's Timeaus. They see the Timeaus as a prefiguration of Christ as the eternal Logos. Surely there is no more abstract Orthodox thinker than St. Maximos, who clearly follows a Platonic aesthetic. In Maximos, it is almost as if Christian theology must follow the canons of geometry laid down by Euclid. The critical point is that, in the classical understanding, or formative understanding, there is no such thing as philosophy as such. It is not a system of anything. It is not a world-view. There is only philosophizing, which is the response to the Divine Eros by man who becomes conscious of the in between nature of his existence. Surely this is the dominant theme in the writings of the Philokalia.

What occurs historically with philosophy is no different than that which happens to theology. There is a deformation of the original experience and insight wherein concepts are reified (i.e. turned into things which take on a separate existence of their own, severed from the formative experience). As this reification occurs you have both philosophy and theology separated into different schools of thought that then generate sectarian arguments. In theology, you have the Antiochene school and the Alexandrian School. Later, you get East vs. West. And today, God help us, you have an infinite number of schools of thought, with the dominant one in America being pre-millenial dispensationalism.

In philosophy you get the Aristotelians and the Platonists, later the Stoics, and by the time of the mideival Latin West, you have the nominalists and the realists. Today all you need is a Phd and you can create your own school of philosophy.

As far as Thomism is concerned, Thomas was looked at skeptically in his own day by many, and in Thomas you have a tendency on the one hand to reify Aristotelian concepts. At the same time, he is trying to square everything Aristotle says with Dionysius. While a contemporary of Thomas, Bonaventure, is surely Orthodox in spirit, with his "Mind's Road to God."

The Crusades seem to be an entirely different problem. There seems to be an outburst of millenarian fervor behind the First Crusade. One argument is that Northern Europe did not develop Christianity in the same way it developed in the classical Roman world. Bishops simply rode through towns baptising barbarians by sprinkling them as he road through town on a horse. Or local barons declared themselves, and by extension the peasantry, to be Christian by fiat. In the early Church in the East, there was a strong intellectual justification for faith, which seemed to be willingly absorbed by the most common of the faithful, most of whom were illiterate, and yet would stand for two hours during the lsermon listening to a very highly refined theological treatise and would engage to such an extent in theological debates that St. Gregory satirizes this in his Introduction to his Theological Orations.

There is no tradition of classical reason in Northern Europe that would serve as a foundation for a broad-based theological concensus. If anything, the problem in the West (i.e. Northern Europe after the fall of Rome) is an utter lack of a philosophical tradition that would serve as a guard against wild heretical movements. What existed as philosophy were a limited number of texts from Aristotle, almost nothing from Plato.

Much the same happens in Russia, where an entire nation is proclaimed to be Christian by fiat. No tradition of classical reason ever existed in Russia, and one senses that virtually every Czar viewed his own people as barbarians. Unfortunately, the only intellectual tradition that was imported to Russia were those of Revolutionary France, which laid the groundwork for Russia's demise. The Slavophile movement of the 19th Century was an effort to develop a philosophical aesthetic, consistent with Orthodoxy, that could lead to a social, cultural Revival of Russia, but it was still born by the Revolution. Today there is a strong need for Orthodoxy to develop philosophically a response to Modernity that is not just a reaction to it(in the valid, classical sense) or risk ending up like the Amish.

[Matthew Panchisin]

Dear Daniel,

I read it a bit and yield to Owen.

Waiting patiently....

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Melissa,

Yes I would say this is one of the many things we see in our present society that have their ultimate roots in that spiritual & cultural shift that gradually occured in western society beginning in the early Medieval period. Philosophical rationalism by the 10thc produces a 'theology' fundamentally different in tone & direction from the Holy Frs (eg Anselm- although Matthew is correct that one can find earlier traces of this in the 8thc); this inevitably introduces a subjective element into western church life which is also evidenced in the piety which also begins to radically change.

From this subjectivism we come to the Renaissance where 'man is the measure of all things'; then the Baroque Age, Enlightenment, Age of Revolution, etc. These are massive jumps in history with many twisting threads in reality but in general I think we can say the following:gradually man & society in the west come to the notion of being autonomous from God; the Church is no longer the foundation of western society from about the 18th (chiefly through the intellectual class).

The concept of seperation of Church & state as we know it is developed by the Philosophes & Enlightenment thinkers of the 18thc. Its main characteristic is a false rhetoric which invents & then appeals to a 'victim' (to this day this remains a powerful current in western political & moral thought- its falsity is rarely recognised even by Christians- it relies 100% on pride to have any effect); but its actual aim is to detatch man & society from God.

It seems that all countries in the west eventually succumbed to this secularising force.
But different countries according to their history have shaped this in different ways. Both France & America are formed out of Revolution and so the concept of seperation of church & state plays a greater role than in Canada for example (though Canada is more secularised in other ways). In these countries this concept is almost part of the national culture and moral definition. Also America has a very strong streak of individualism mixed with a sense of moral superiority that strongly marks its culture & its religious sense. (In Canada it is more community oriented with a strong thread of compromise & moral relativism).

Since no-one can act without a faith in something even if it is in themselves yes, in reality political leaders act from a faith whether from a moral sense, individualism or a more open religious faith.

Having come down this path of 'seperation of church & state' however I personally find that to try to restore Christian faith to politics can be a quite ambiguous task. In a general sense we as Orthodox Christians must pray and act so that we may have a moral society. Also I think we must recognise those threads in our societies which are potentially positive- humanitarianism, justice, rule of law- none of this goes against the grain of what Orthodoxy always strove for in the world.

However we live in a multi-religious, multi-cultural society. If our leaders are overtly religious in this society they truly do risk doing violence to other religious groups. Again, this is only personal & I do not mean it as priestly direction- but I suspect we as Orthodox would have a hard time with a hard-line Fundamentalist as Prime Minister in Canada. And conversely would it be right for us Orthodox to use the political process for what is now our own particualr perception of things? I find these difficult & complex questions that have no easy answer. In a sense I would just say that this is part of the struggle of our times. Man because he has tried to seperate himself from God has suceeded in creating a schizoid society of different compartments which he finds 'normal & good'. It is the perfect image of the broken un-harmonious man precisely because our society is in our image. But having come down this road there is no easy way out- especially political chiliastic which we fell into enough in the 20thc. I think what we should do is the best we can- trying with discernment to put the Light of Christ in all we do-in our family, our workplace, with our neighbours- but this can only come if we work on ourselves first and take up our cross & follow Christ.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Owen Jones]

Dear Christopher,

I was responding to a point made that Rome went wrong by adopting "pagan" philosophy. Alcuin was mentioned, as was St. Anselm and St. Thomas. While I do believe that many theological problems in the West have an underlying philosophic error behind them, I also believe that the history of the influence of philosophy in Christianity is complicated and not necessarily amenable to broad generalizations, and that one could just as equally argue that the problem of theological errors in the West is due to the fact that Northern Europe lacked any foundation in classical reason, (i.e. philosophy) that they were limited in what philosophical texts were available to them, and that the near fixation with Aristotle was based not only on a narrow exposure to philosophy but also a reification of philosophy into hardened concepts. So it's not really philosophy at all in the classical sense.

Surely one cannot separate the Greek philosophical contribution to the development of theology and dogma in the East, and that's because the Greek Fathers operated within an aesthetic vision of the whole of reality. Theology is science, par excellence, and as such does not negate everything that is not theology. It does not pit theology against Greek learning, but elevates it to a higher aesthetic vision. So a blanket condemnation of philosophy as something bad because it is "pagan" is not fair or accurate, and is inconsistent with most of the Greek Patristic tradition.

In response to your objections, I was merely pointing out that conversion to Christianity in Northern Europe and Russia occurred quite differently than in the Greek world, which had a 500 year civilizational tradition behind it prior to Christ, where Christian conversion was an individual decision, and the Church expanded from the bottom up, so to speak. The point was not intended as a blanket condemnation of Russian Orthodoxy or the Latin West. But I think it is accurate to state that these peoples largely became Christian by fiat, and there are certain consequences to that.



Regarding Orthodoxy today vs. secularism or "modernity," -- I don't think the situation is entirely unlike the challenge presented to the early Church in the context of the Roman culture. Theologians not only preached the Gospel but they also confronted the surrounding culture with an apologetic that combined Biblical exegesis with a philosophic critique of the surrounding culture, by refuting the arguments made by the pagans, such as Celsus, using their own arguments against them. There are certainly some writers engaged in a similar apologetic today, but largely what I find is either those who have made an accommodation with liberal secularism (e.g. the current Ecumenical Patriarch) or those who call themselves "traditionalists" who tend to be somewhat apocalyptic and want to just live as if modernity and secularism don't exist or don't matter.



The issue can best be framed with a practical question. If the Church were to start a school from scratch that went from k through college or the Phd level, what would be the curriculum? Would it only be the Bible and the Fathers? As soon as you get beyond that, you are confronted with philosophical questions. For example, what has mathematics to do with the Gospel and the Fathers? Why study mathematics at all? Or Geometry. Or Biology? Are these discreet subjects? That just have to be taught so that people can have jobs? Or do they have something intrinsic to do with God? What God? Whose God?

These are fundamentally aesthetic, not dogmatic issues. Typologically, Orthodoxy is an aesthetic doctrine. And the "problems" that we "traditionalists" find with "modernity" are largely aesthetic problems. It is up to the Church to offer a reasoned critique of modern aestheticsj on its own terms, and to offer an alternative vision that, while consistent with our dogma, is not strictly framed in dogmatic terms. And there is no reason why that vision should not be central to our preaching in the local parish. My parish is Greek. We are dogmatically Orthodox. You won't find any heretical teachings or practices. But culturally, we are secularized Protestants in virtually every respect, because that is the social ambience. So we live a double life.

[Daniel Jeandet]

Hey Owen, I sent you an email but you didnt reply. Im not demanding a reply http://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif but perhaps the email address you have in your profile is broken or you dont check it that often. Just checking.

I am starting to come around to your thinking on this Owen. I am interested in your thoughts on how to provide an education in philosophy. I have a son who is only three years old, but I am not counting on our school system to really form his little mind. I want to teach him some things myslef at home to make up for what is lacking. I myself have not read much philosophy, maybe you could recomend some books or something.

I like where Saint Maximus says that God has joined art and science to create geometry.

[Melissa]

Daniel J. -
I know you didn't ask me about your son's future education, but I had a thought about it I hope you don't mind my sharing with you - it's just that a classical education (the Great Books, poetry, music, philosophy, math is ever so slowly "coming into style" again, because educators are discovering that we do need to know history, that great books, etc. teach us social skills as well as how to think, and that the arts and math exercise our brains in very important ways (explainable biologically) - I'd add studying Orthodoxy, because as one grows in faith much is learned, and much is healed.
How nice that you're already thinking about your son's formation -God bless you and your family.
Melissa