Jesuits vs. Russian Orthodox? I don't think so. For the Chinese Orthodox, nationality became of less consequence to them than their Orthodoxy. Nothing in that about being annexed by Russia or necessarily losing their Chinese identity. Jesus Christ and the Holy Orthodox faith was of greater importance than notions of race and nation. This is the story of Orthodoxy. National identity is less important than Orthodox identity. This happened for the Chinese Orthodox. It happened for the Aleutian-Alaskan Orthodox. It happened for the Japanese Orthodox and it is happening now for the Indonesian Orthodox, the Western Orthodox converts and so many more.
Before we go into that, are you Chinese? Have you met any Chinese Orthodox?
Eastern Orthodox life has been an organic development always-
The Novella of Justinian, the Byzantinization of Pat. Balsamon "of Antioch," the Reformation of Nikon, the Spiritual Regulation of Czar Peter....you skip over, or have substantial gaps in, significant parts of the history of the Orthodox Church.
mperfect at times in application, but arguably nurtured by so many saints and holy people of God. Even the fact that for the Western European peoples that Orthodox saints stopped after the Schism - that Western society produced no saints once Western society was outside the Church has had a huge impact on the spiritual lives of Europe, the Americas etc.
This assertion has been made before, and it has failed yet, as far as I have seen, to be substantiated.
As for not producing saints, what you should mean is that the Orthodox Church cannot, at least at present, glorify saints that the West produced after the schism. What you have said is that virtue evaporated from the West
Do get your facts straight, and state straightforward what you mean by "that Western society produced no saints once Western society was outside the Church has had a huge impact on the spiritual lives of Europe, the Americas ."
It is only Eastern Orthodoxy that has breathed the Spirit of God into the spiritually bankrupt West.
Oh, the East hasn't been the land of plenty you are portraying. Had it been, we would not have experienced the Western Captivity of the Church.
We western converts owe our spiritual lives on those saints and missionaries from Greece, Russia and the Middle East. The Western-rite itself is the product of the benevolence of Eastern Orthodoxy.
Your point?
Of course the negatives of the West have hugely impacted on Orthodox societies and contemporary culture. That Orthodox Christian kingdoms like Greece and Serbia are now secular republics is a product of the anti-monarchical and anti-Orthodox spirit of modern post French Revolution western thinking.
The Spiritual Regulation of the Holy Governing Synod of the Russian Empire was issued long before the French Revpolution.
Even Russia today is yet to make peace with God in the restoration of the Orthodox Tsars.
As much as I am a monarchist, Russia is under no obligation of God to elect a Tsar nor restore the Romanovs.
The New Calendarist modernism owes much to the spirit of contemporary Western pseudo-scientific and entirely secular thinking. That is why the Julian calendar itself is so important because it serves as a signal separation of the Orthodox from non-believers.
So you have to disavow science to reject secularism? I prefer to follow the Fathers, and accept that the spring equinox occurs on March 21, Revised Julian Calendar.
That the English monarchy has preserved albeit via a heterodox Church of England so much Orthodox notions of the relationship between the monarchy and God is a sign of the residue of Orthodoxy in some places of the Western psyche. May God grant that Orthodoxy, Eastern and Western will convert the West anew.
And in the process convert the East anew.