Why I Call Myself an Eastern-Leaning Catholic
From atheist to the pew, with a long look East
One Sunday, I visited the park and a woman showed up wearing a jersey from the Kansas City Chiefs football team. Before I would have said, “Oh, she’s a Chiefs fan.”
Now, since becoming an Eastern-leaning Catholic, I realize, “She is the Chiefs.”
How I Got Here
I was baptized Catholic and attended Catholic school through 4th grade. Then we moved to Virginia and my parents asked me which school I wanted, public or private. My cousin was the only person I knew in our new town, and he attended the public school, so the answer was easy: public.
Statistically, I would have fallen away from the church at some point anyway. It happened earlier, and I was an atheist until my mid-30s.
Today, although I’m back in the Catholic Church, when I’m sitting in the pew, I often look East.
I credit the Eastern Orthodox Church and its teachings with much of my return to Christianity. It speaks a language the Western Church wasn’t speaking to me.
A Quick History of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Split
The Catholic and the Orthodox Church were once one. The Church formed around a long line of apostles beginning with Peter, whom Christ tasked with building his Church.
“And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”
— Matthew 16:18
In the 11th century, for various reasons, the Undivided Church split. It was a great tragedy, and many pray that it one day reunites.
The Pattern, Hiding in Plain Sight
The East speaks in more of a visual, pattern-based language. This is the language my ears, or more accurately, my eyes, are attuned to.
It works by recognizing categories. And one of the primary categories is a pair: the head and the body. For me, the head/body relationship became a new way of understanding everything: God, the story of Jesus, and the church.
It’s a fairly simple pattern. But it’s deceptively simple because it’s fractal, meaning it appears at every scale of reality. Let me give you an everyday example.
Think about the phrase “head of the household.” You instantly know what that means. In the Western world and certainly in the Christian tradition, that role is typically filled by a man, but I want you to see the distinction between the role and the specific person. They are separate, and it’s the role that’s the key part of the pattern.
What does the head of the household do? He protects, provides for, and has the final say.
The other half of the pattern is the body. The body is the rest of the family: the members (spouse, kids), and more than that... the house, the morning routine, the handprint mold on the mantel, the yearly Christmas tree lighting.
Now let’s jump down a fractal level...
Your body has a head, and it is your heart. You might say, wait a minute, the heart is inside the body, how can it be a head?
That’s the fractal move. Like Russian dolls, you’ll find the head/body pattern nested within itself. Within every body, you’ll find a new head and body.
In your physical body, your heart is the head at this inner level. The Eastern tradition calls it the center of your being. What you receive there transforms you, and the transformation radiates outward into the rest of your life.
“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
— Proverbs 4:23
Our language reflects this understanding of the heart. Pascal, a mathematician and scientist, wrote: “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.” When we say “trust your heart, not your head,” we’re not talking about your organs. Rather, it’s a difference in fractal levels. We’re essentially saying: step down from the head/body pattern into the heart/body pattern.
That’s what I mean by jumping a fractal level.
So, at one level you have your physical head and body.
Step down, and you have your heart and the rest of your body.
Step down again, and we find your cells.
Zoom in on your heart and we’ll find cells. Each cell has a head: the nucleus. And a body: the organelles, each with its own roles and rituals.
I hope you’re noticing that this is not just a metaphor. It’s structural; it’s real. This is what I meant in my very first article about Christianity being not merely a religion, but an explanation of reality.
Let’s keep going, but reverse our direction...
We went down to the cell. Now let’s travel up past the heart, past the whole person, and further still, to the level of an organization—a sports team.
The head of a sports team is its spirit. The logo embodies that spirit best. When you wear the logo, you’re saying, “I belong to this particular body.”
Knights wore the colors of the lord they served. My cousins bought “The Broas Family” sweatshirts for our family reunion. The woman at the park? Her jersey declared, “I am part of this body. I am the Chiefs.”
Because without fans, there is no Chiefs.
Seeing this pattern changed me. Whether I was talking about a cell, a person, a sports team, or a city—I was seeing the same thing. This is the world the Eastern Orthodox tradition opened my eyes to. It’s a pattern of reality I can’t unsee. And it’s one I trust, as much as I trust the sky is blue or that I love my kids.
(When it comes to seeing this pattern, I largely credit Matthieu Pageau and his book The Language of Creation. As well as his brother, Jonathan, who applies the pattern to everyday life through his publishing company, The Symbolic World. Both draw on the Eastern Church Fathers, like Saint Maximus the Confessor. I’ll put together a reading list at some point, but the point is, this is an ancient way of seeing, not a modern one.)
So, Where Is Christ’s Body?
I couldn’t find a reason why the same rules that apply at the level of a cell, a person, or a sports team wouldn’t apply to a church.
Scripture tells us Christ is the head.
“He is the head of the body, the church.”
— Colossians 1:18
So, where is His body?
“So in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”
— Romans 12:5“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”
— 1 Corinthians 12:27
His body is the church. And just like a cell, a person, or a sports team, you can’t reduce the body to one thing. The same fractal logic applies to every head/body.
The Bible is part of the body, and so are the sacraments, the liturgy, the parishioners, the bishops, and the saints.
If the head/body pattern is real, the body isn’t a metaphor. It has to actually exist, somewhere in history, right now.
The obvious question became, “Who is claiming to be the body of Christ’s church?”
That narrowed it down immediately. Both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church do. They claimed it as one unified church for 1,000 years, then split, and now both still claim to be the body. That’s why I see them as two strands of the same rope, held together by the Nicene Creed.
Referring to the Christian East and West as the Church’s “two lungs,” Pope John Paul II wrote:
“The Church must breathe with her two lungs”
— Pope John Paul II
Back in the pew
Every Sunday, I sit in the pew and see the same pattern I saw at the park, except now I’m the one wearing the jersey.
The priest is the shepherd of the flock, the head of this particular body. Our parish is part of the Diocese of San Diego, which has a bishop at its head. And our parish is one member of the universal church. During Mass, every Catholic on earth is reading the same readings as me.
The same pattern, at every level.
The West gave me the arguments, the sacraments, and the home I already had. The East gave me the patterns, the icons, and the mystery.
That’s why I call myself an Eastern-leaning Catholic. Will I one day convert to Orthodox? Maybe. But my prayer is that I won’t have to choose, and that the two strands become one rope again.