I gotta have my orange juice.

A parable of catholicity

Grampa and gramma: You’re no grandson of ours unless you move back to our house!
Pawpaw and memaw: You’re no grandson of ours unless you move back to our house!

Applications

1. This is absurd; we don’t have to choose between our grandparents. History is structured in such a way that the farther back we look, the more fathers we find, not the less.
2. It is self-evident that honoring, appreciating, and living in fellowship with someone doesn’t require you to agree with them in every way or submit to all of their demands. Very likely love will sometimes require you to do the opposite.
3. It appears comforting to have many things provided and taken care of for you (or so it may seem!). But if you gave in to their demands, you would be robbing yourself of opportunities that God is providing for you to grow by wrestling with complex and difficult things. You would be placing a limit on your maturity and faithfulness. In fact, we recognize that this is generally true of all paternalistic despotism, whether it exists in the family, the state, or the church: it is ultimately infantilizing; it devours life rather than giving and multiplying it.

Of course, my parable is too generous by far to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. As things work out in reality, it is an organized gang of distant cousins insisting that you move in with them.